German and Italian investors and manufacturers have shown keen interest to make big investments in Allama Iqbal Industrial City, a prioritized Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development and Management Company (FIEDMC) under CPEC. This was revealed by FIEDMC Chairman Mian Kashif Ashfaq, on Wednesday, during their ongoing Europe tour while talking to different delegations of investors from Germany and Italy.
He went on to discuss that there is a vast scope of enhancing Pak-German bilateral trade relations whereas German investors were also taking keen interest to invest in various sectors in Pakistan especially in FIEDMC.
FIEDMC Chairman, Mian Kashif also announced that the investors and manufacturers’ delegation from Germany would soon visit Pakistan to explore business opportunities in the Pakistani market and FIEDMC would provide them all required assistance in this regard. He said that Germany is exporting modern machinery for textile, especially for value added textile sector, which would help Pakistani textile manufacturers to bring improvement in quality of their products and reduce cost of doing business. He said that Pakistani textile exports to Germany had upward trend by 16 percent after Pakistan got GSP plus status.
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Pakistan is home to a diverse industrial market and a wide variety of resources and export-oriented companies. This promises foreign companies to prosper with ease, especially, in the comforts of state-of-the-art Special Economic Zones (SEZs). The timely ground-breaking of AIIC, in the first week of January 2020, has seen lots of institutional pedal work.
While highlighting the FIEDMC development projects and potential on a previous occasion, Mian Kashif explained that a sum of Rs. 357 billion (foreign and local investment) is expected to flow into various projects, which indicates that investors already have complete confidence in the present regime.
Similarly, Mian Kashif said that the Italian investors are also eager to invest in various sectors including LPG, energy, hydropower, mining, agriculture machinery, food processing, automotive, telecommunication, oil & gas and marble sectors. Chairman FIEDMC also believes that the Italian investment is important for Pakistan and assured to take every possible measure for cooperation with the Italian investors.
Industrial City has been planned over an area of more than 3000 acres, is strategically located on Motorway M-4, near Sahianwala Interchange, Faisalabad
‘Following the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan, FIEDMC is extending maximum facilities to the foreign and local manufacturers and providing services to entrepreneurs under one roof for ease of doing business in the province’, he said. He further revealed that all industries within the export processing zone would be exempted from tax for a period of 10 years and in fact, plants, machinery, raw material and other equipment would be imported duty-free.
FIEDMC has successfully constructed three industrial estates along Faisalabad’s motorway, namely, Value Added City (VAC), M-3 Industrial City (M-3-IC) and Allama Iqbal Industrial City (AIIC). AIIC is the first of the nine CPEC linked SEZs that has effectively left the stage of design, discussion and approvals, and has materialized on the ground with its structure – complete with access roads and commitments of investments from national and international stakeholders.
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Industrial City has been planned over an area of more than 3000 acres, is strategically located on Motorway M-4, near Sahianwala Interchange, Faisalabad. According to Mian Kashif, projects, like FIEDMC’s industrial estates, have the potential to enhance the country’s exports by 1 to $1.5 Billion per annum in the short run with a comprehensive and effectively designed strategy specifically tailored to meet Pakistan’s exporting shortcomings.
With the help of FIEDMC’s Europe tour, we anticipate an influx of foreign investments that will ultimately improve international relations, help polish our industrial sector and stabilize the economy further.