Pakistan, Romania to boost trade ties
Staff Report

ISLAMABAD—Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz Monday underlining historically close relations between Pakistan and Romania, called for boosting economic ties to further strengthen cooperation in a broad spectrum of areas.
Talking to Deputy Prime Minister of Romania Bogdan PASCU at the PM House, Prime Minister Aziz called for activation of the Pak-Romania Joint Economic Commission to institutionalize and streamline cooperation between the two countries.
He said Pakistan has emerged out from low investment, low growth syndrome and its economy has substantially expanded during the last four years enabling it to position itself as one of the fastest growing economies of the Asian region.
The Prime Minister said Pakistan’s reform agenda has been rated as one of the most broad-based programmes ever undertaken by a government and the country was considered among the top ten reforming states in the world. The Prime Minister said as the international system was moving towards geo-economics, economic cooperation, technical exchanges and sharing of human capital was of vital importance.
He said Pakistan and Romania need to explore avenues for further cooperation in these areas. He said Pakistan achieved 6.6% growth despite the surging oil prices and the earthquake last year. The size of the economy has doubled to US 134 billion dollar in the last seven years, per capita income has doubled to US 847 dollars. He said Pakistan offered tremendous opportunities to local and foreign investors in several areas. The Prime Minister said in the social sector, health, education, women empowerment and safeguarding rights of minorities were priority areas of the government. Aziz said government was also investing on higher education and strengthening institutions of higher learning to prepare a critical mass of human capital in key areas to build a knowledge based economy. Bogdan PASCU termed his visit to Pakistan very productive and fruitful saying it will establish linkages between the two countries.