![](https://icci.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Activity-Pic-Feb-09-20.jpg)
Business Community demands direct air links between Pakistan and Maldives to promote bilateral trade
- February 09, 2020
Vice Admiral (R) Ather Mukhar, Pakistan’s Ambassador-designate
to Maldives visited Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) and
exchanged views with Muhammad Ahmed Waheed President to further improve
bilateral trade and economic relations between Pakistan and Maldives. Tahir
Abbasi Senior Vice President, Saif ur Rehman Khan Vice President ICCI and others
were also present at the occasion.
Vice Admiral ® Ather Mukhtar said that Maldives was quite better in tourism
while many areas of Pakistan including North Region have great potential to
promote tourism and added that promoting bilateral cooperation in tourism
between Pakistan and Maldives would be his top priority. He said that Pakistan
should focus on improving tourism infrastructure and skills development of
people to attract more tourists. He said that providing better facilities to local
tourists would entice more foreign tourists to Pakistan. He said that Pakistan can
export many products to Maldives including rice, fruits & vegetables and
pharmaceuticals and urged that business community should accelerate efforts
for promoting exports to Maldives. He assured that Pakistan Embassy in
Maldives would extend all possible cooperation in these efforts.
Speaking at the occasion, Muhammad Ahmed Waheed, President, Islamabad
Chamber of Commerce & Industry said that tourism industry in Pakistan has
great potential to achieve rapid growth and close cooperation with Maldives in
this area would be beneficial to Pakistan. He said that bilateral trade between
Pakistan and Maldives was far less than the actual potential of both countries
and its main reason was absence of direct air links between both countries. He
stressed that Pakistan and Maldives should focus on establishing direct air links
that would improve trade volume between them. He said that Pakistan’s sea
food and dry fruits have also good potential for exports to Maldives for which
direct air connectivity was needed as trade through sea route was quite
expensive between both countries.
Tahir Abbasi Senior Vice President, Saif ur Rehman Khan Vice President ICCI,
Naeem ur Rehman Piracha, Khalid Chaudhry, Naveed Malik and others also
spoke at the occasion and shared useful ideas for improving two-way trade
between Pakistan and Maldives.