ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Japan on Thursday agreed to further enhance trade, particularly trade in agriculture products, besides enhancing mutual cooperation.
Ambassador of Japan to Pakistan Mitsuhiro Wada and the Federal Minister for National Food Security Syed Fakhar Imam held a meeting on Thursday.
Imam said that the two countries could immensely benefit from exchange in agriculture research and value-added technologies. He praised the quality of mechanization in Japan and said that Japan and Pakistan had huge trade potential. Pakistan had export potential with respect to citrus fruits, rice, mangoes, onion, potatoes, fisheries and livestock, he added.
He said Pakistan has 8 million tons of rice, which could be exported to Japan and added that a value-added industry needed to be set up to fully take advantage of its agricultural products.
Imam said that Pakistan exported approximately 144,000 tonnes of mangoes internationally and hence its export to Japan also had huge potential.
The minister said Pakistan faced a number of challenges but with the right policy interventions under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan, the agriculture sector was transformed. He said that Pakistani agriculture had been tottering along the traditional agricultural techniques and it was time that we started to look ahead to the future in terms of modernization.
Imam also highlighted the government’s efforts and said that in the last 70 years the main set back to research was insufficient funds, adding that this was the first time in the history that under Prime Minister Initiative Program billions of rupees had been invested in agricultural research which had led to record production of wheat, maize and rice last year.
Mitsuhiro Wada, speaking on the occasion, told the minister that Pakistani agricultural products had huge potential if they were converted into value-added products through processing. He said that Pakistan was one of the biggest exporters of shrimp, mangoes, dates and rice to Japan.
He showed great interest in importing rice from Pakistan in addition to fisheries and said that Japan imports rice from Pakistan and had a substantial market for fisheries. The ambassador said that Japan is greatly interested in increasing trade between the two countries.
