BEIJING: A Chinese seed company and Pakistan’s embassy in China have agreed to explore opportunities for expanding collaboration in breeding seeds.
The agreement was reached in a recent meeting between Fareena Arshad, Counsellor of the Pakistan embassy in China, and the Chinese seed enterprise Hainan State Farms Nanfan Industrial Group.
Speaking on occasion, the counsellor Fareena Arshad said Pakistan possessed high-standard tropical fruit and agricultural germplasm resources. As a counsellor, she will actively promote collaboration between agricultural enterprises in the two countries and establish a solid platform for agricultural research and development, cultivation, and processing industries, Fareena Arshad said.
Li Zhiquan, the president of the Chinese seed company, said that the firm will communicate with Pakistani research institutes and seed enterprises and seek possible avenues for seed breeding, agricultural research and development and cultivation.
Initially, an online forum will be arranged in the near future to gather bilateral seed companies and promote seed exchanges and cooperation.
Chinese trade
Moreover, China remains the largest trading partner of Pakistan during the first quarter of the current fiscal year 2022-23 and the top investor in the country in the first 5 months of FY 2022-23, contributing 23.83 per cent, or 102.5 million dollars, to its FDI.
It is expected that as special economic zones under the umbrella of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) are being established, they will bring more FDI into the country in the near future, not only from China but also from other states.
China’s Assistant Minister of Commerce Chen Chunjiang recently said that from 2013 to 2022, the trade volume in goods between China and BRI nations doubled from 1.04 trillion to 2.07 trillion dollars, with an average annual growth rate of 8 per cent.
China’s bilateral investment in BRI nations exceeded 270 billion dollars in the same period.
As Pakistan is one of the most important players in the BRI project, with its flagship CPEC, Pak-China bilateral trade is expected to increase further.
