Pakistan Businesses Forum (PBF) President Mian Usman Zulfiqar said on Sunday that business community wished to maintain positive momentum in bilateral trade relations with Russia.
He told the media here that bilateral trade between Pak-Russia had always been in favour of Russia.
Bilateral trade reached all-time high in year 2020 with US $758 million trade volume. Pakistan’s major exports to Russia consisted of textile and textile articles (HS-50-63) which accounted for 40 per cent of Pakistan’s total exports to Russia in 2020.
He observed that Russian market presents an opportunity to Pakistan to increase its exports but access was hampered by factors including those relating to banking and payment channels, a strict Russian business visa regime, the absence of direct cargo and passenger flights, very long transit shipment routes, increased freight charges in recent months, language barriers, and absence of an International Road Transport (TIR) agreement etc.
For Pakistan, the PBF President said, there existed an export potential of around US $2.8 billion in Russia mainly driven by the textiles (US $1.6 billion), agricultural products (US $330 million), surgical items (US $356 million), chemical and allied products (US $178 million), footwear (US $82 million) and plastic products (US $62 million).
Despite that Pakistan possessed a significant export potential in meat and seafood sector. However, in the last 10 years, Pakistan had not exported either of these products to Russia. —APP
