Effective communication road links among ECO countries stressed
By Adnan Rafique

ISLAMABAD—Deputy Chairman Planning Commission, Engineer Dr. Muhammad Akram Sheikh on Monday stressed the need for an effective modern transportation and communication network for enhancing the cooperation within the framework of Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) countries.
“This is particularly important because seven of the ten ECO member states are land-locked and require facilitation of transit traffic, he said while addressing the inaugural session of the 18th Regional Planning Council meeting of ECO. The four-day meeting is being held here to review the progress of ECO and future areas of common interest in trade and investment, transport and communication, agriculture, industry, human resource development, energy and environment sectors.
He said Pakistan was spending considerable resources on strengthening and expanding the country’s logistic chain adding: “The National Trade Corridor encompassing all aspects of the logistic chain, targets the creation of new national, provincial an rural roads, together with expressways and modern distribution facilities and warehousing, container ports, airports and railways.”
Akram Sheikh also underlined the need to increase absolute value of global trade and enhance intra-regional trade among the ECO member countries. He said that environment for trade and investment in ECO countries was excellent, with energy, textile and manufacturing sectors in the lead. “The share of manufactured exports in total exports as well as the inflow of FDI among ECO countries is also low and needs to be enhanced,” he added. He said Pakistan had just launched its Vision for the year 2030 for transforming it into a developed, industrialised, just and prosperous country through rapid and sustainable growth.
He expressed the hope that deliberations in the meeting by eminent group of planners would provide specific set of recommendations for the collective welfare of the future of ECO countries and they would be able to undertake preparation of some sort of vision for the development of whole region.
He said Pakistan was committed to making the accumulation of knowledge and collective competence the major driver of its economic growth. He said Pakistan would not only welcome sharing its aspirations and policies regarding the Vision 2030, but looked forward to learning collective wisdom and active collaboration from ECO countries in this respect. The Deputy Chairman Planning Commission specifically mentioned the enormous energy and mineral resources possessed by the ECO member countries and said that Pakistan looked forward to their collective contribution to the collective good. He expressed the optimism that the programmes for energy flows across the ECO countries would be enhanced and sustained under mutually beneficial arrangements. “The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline agreement is nearly concluded and we look forward to other such arrangements”, he added. Akram Sheikh expressed the hope that Pakistan would be known as ‘Coal and Copper’ country a few years down the line and asked ECO countries participation in exploitation of these resources. He also stressed the need for enhancing cooperation in agri, industry and tourism sectors.
He said Pakistan had experienced the longest spell of its strong growth in the last six years and added that it had sustained 7.0 per cent economic growth for the last five years.
Earlier, Secretary General ECO, Khurshid Anwar spoke at length about the successes of ECO and its future goals. He also highlighted the aims and objectives of ECO. The inaugural session was also addressed by Secretary Planning and Development Division, Ghiasuddin Ahmed.