IT is encouraging that after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan on Thursday committed to investing $10 billion in multiple sectors of the Pakistani economy. He made the commitment during his meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Abu Dhabi where he also assured support of his country for Pakistan in all circumstances. The visit provided an opportunity to discuss the whole gamut of bilateral relations, including cooperation in political, economic, social, cultural and defence sectors, with the PM underscoring the importance of galvanizing existing cooperation and strengthening strategic partnership, including in the field of information technology, renewable energy and tourism.
It is a welcome development that augurs well for putting Pakistan on firm footings economically as per the vision and philosophy of the newly created platform of Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), which is focusing mainly on Gulf countries. The understanding reached with Saudi Arabia and the UAE is testimony to the fact that the forum has started delivering as per its mandate and Pakistan’s economic and financial woes would mitigate considerably provided the political commitment is transformed into concrete and tangible projects for investment. The most important is the fact that the projects picked for investment must help accelerate the pace of socio-economic progress and strengthen the ability of the country to pay back its increasing burden of external loans. There are indications that the country was moving towards that direction as the Prime Minister reiterated the commitment of his Government to ensure meaningful implementation of investment cooperation agreements in the areas of energy, port operations projects, wastewater treatment, food security, logistics, minerals and banking and financial services. This was also highlighted by the remarks of the PM that he was in the UAE not to seek loans but joint collaboration and investment. It may be pointed out that the United Arab Emirates has already been contributing significantly to the progress and development of Pakistan. A number of UAE companies are engaged in fruitful activities in different spheres of life and the brotherly country never disappointed Pakistan during times of economic and financial crises. It offered generous assistance to Pakistan on different occasions to help bridge over its problems and tackle natural calamities like earthquake and floods. It provided assistance to build entire cities, restore damaged infrastructure and establish state-of-the art medical and educational institutions. The United Arab Emirates is also home to about 1.8 million Pakistani workforce that is remitting significant foreign exchange to the country. As for investment, the prospects were always there but these could not be materialized due to political instability, lack of consistency in policies, security environment and also because of inability of the authorities concerned to market the investment potential of the country. Now things have started changing as the country succeeded in defeating terrorism, policies and reforms have been initiated to stabilize the economy and concerns of the potential investors are being addressed in a satisfactory manner. It was because of this that Saudi Arabia has also pledged to expedite $5 billion in investment, while the kingdom’s foreign minister said last month that Riyadh will be “moving ahead significantly” to invest in projects in Pakistan. Two high level delegations visited Pakistan in a short span of few weeks in a bid to sort out details of investment. It is appreciable that the Prime Minister has taken upon himself to monitor progress on implementation of the understanding reached with the Kingdom for investment in Pakistan. Hopefully, he would also constantly do so in the case of investment proposals from the United Arab Emirates as these have the potential to revive the economy and create enormous employment opportunities for otherwise disillusioned youth. As both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have embarked upon huge modernization programmes and diversification of their economies, Pakistan can take advantage of the situation by meeting skilled manpower requirements of the two countries and initiation of joint ventures especially in IT and agriculture sectors. There are also bright prospects for initiating joint ventures in defence production in which Pakistan has necessary expertise and potential to take care of the needs of the brotherly countries.
