The Ambassador of Argentina His Excellency Leopoldo Francisco Sahores addressed the Board of Governors of Karachi Council on Foreign Relations. He said that Argentina and Pakistan have a lot of shared values and issues and efforts have been made to improve further especially in bilateral trade between us.
Personally, the Ambassador said that he wanted to take more concrete steps to further improving relations that he was looking into establishing more Person to Person and Business to Business connections and then through the Chambers of Commerce of both countries.
He said that trade with Pakistan was very low and there is a desire in Argentina to improve the level of trade with Pakistan. He said that Argentina was also interested in helping Pakistan’s agricultural sector. Argentina is an agricultural dominant country, and its agricultural research breakthroughs especially in grain storage would prove to be very beneficial for Pakistan. Research in livestock upkeep could also benefit Pakistan.
The Ambassador said that Pakistan has a huge growing domestic market and that Argentina was interested in trade and also in creating joint ventures. The Ambassador also said that he intended to improve the cultural relations between Pakistan and Argentina. He planned on bringing in prominent writers from Argentina in the month of February next year to Pakistan who would hold meetings with cultural organizations in Karachi.
He also spoke of the Film industry, that was concentrated in Karachi that could be tapped into and also efforts were in hand to promoting Spanish language in Pakistan. Other avenues of cultural interaction included tourism as well. Unfortunately very few people toured between the two countries while both have wonderful tourism potential. For sports he stated that Argentina’s football team was one of the best in the world and he hoped he would be able to get female footballers from Argentina to Pakistan for training women in this sport. He continued that exchange of trade delegations between the two countries to promote business to business relations with Pakistan was essential.
He further added that arrangements like MERCOSUR could be arranged between the two countries to improve trade. He also said that Argentina could provide assistance to improve food security.Themeeting was concluded by Vice AdmiralKhalid Mir, Chairman KCFR, who thanked the Ambassador His Excellency Leopoldo Francisco Sahores for being with KCFR. He gratefully the Ambassador for the very productivepresentation and discussions of thepresent relations between Pakistanand Argentina. Both being agricultural countries have an immense commonality of interests.
It was agreed by the Ambassador that actions on the issues mentioned above should be followed up by both countries especially in the fields of sharing agricultural research,in technology and bio technology for improving yields, crops management, joint ventures in dairy sector including value addition, preventing/curing diseases in livestock.
, and grain storage etc, through regular exchanges of business delegations and enlarging trade through more connectivity. The Ambassador was also given a tour of Quaid-e-Azam House Museum. The Ambassador was quite thrilled to have visited the house of the father of the nation and was very thankful to KCFR for arranging the visit.
