KARACHI, March 30: Consul General of China in Karachi, Li Bijian has said that Pakistan and China are working to narrow down a bilateral trade imbalance heavily tilted towards Beijing.
While addressing an event in the port city, Li Bijian said that in recent days the bilateral trade has grown very fast but the problem is that this trade is heavily imbalanced, adding Pakistan has more imports than its exports to China.
“Even though both China and Pakistan are trying to narrow down the trade deficit,” he further said. However, he admitted that efforts to create a balance are “not working.” Bijian added, “My government is not intentionally seeking a surplus of trade with Pakistan. We want to balance the trade but it is not working as we wished even though two governments have upgraded the Free Trade Agreement (FTA).”
He said that more than 300 tariff free items have been allowed to enter China, which is huge progress pushed by his government to narrow down the trade deficit. “One of the best and most efficient ways to narrow down the trade is import substitution,” he added, referring to a trade and economic policy that advocates replacing foreign imports with domestic production.
Responding to a question about progress on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) of energy and infrastructure projects which has seen Beijing pledge over $60 billion, the Chinese diplomat said after the completion of the first phase of the scheme, it was now in a second phase focused on spurring industrialisation in Pakistan.
“In the first phase around 17 projects were initiated and most of them are now operational, including energy and infrastructure projects,” the diplomat said. – NNI
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