“It is worthwhile for Hungary to tighten its economic relations with Pakistan”, Minister of State for Economic Diplomacy Levente Magyar told Hungarian M1 television following negotiations in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad on Tuesday.

The Minister of State explained: Pakistan is a country with extremely good agricultural capabilities, but nobody has ever organised large-scale agricultural production and there is no industrial-scale, high-quality agricultural production occurring within an organised framework. There are several world class products that Pakistan would like to apply Hungarian technologies to produce, he added.

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Despite this, Pakistan was only Hungary’s 79th most important trading partner in 2015 and export to the South Asian country decreased by 16.5 percent compared to the precious year. Following this drop last year, the Government’s goal is for bilateral trade flow between the two countries to begin growing again in 2016, de declared.

According to Mr. Magyar, the most important goal of negotiations is to gain a deeper insight into Pakistan and to provide Pakistani politicians and businesspeople with more information about Hungary. He and his negotiating partners had agreed that in addition to the energy industry and water management, the agricultural sector holds the greatest opportunities for Hungarian enterprises, Mr. Magyar said.

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Amongst others, the Hungarian Minister of State met with special advisor to the Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Tariq Fatemi and with Minister of Trade Khurram Dastgir Khan, primarily to discuss opportunities for enterprises and publicly owned companies from the two countries. The delegation also had several meetings on Hungarian and Pakistani investment opportunities with local businesspeople.

On Wednesday, the Hungarian delegation will officially open the new Khushal Garh Bridge across the Indus River on the border between the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab districts of Pakistan; a significant proportion of the bridge’s construction expenses were paid for by the Pakistani subsidiary of Hungarian energy company MOL, which is the largest Hungarian-owned company operating in the country, managing some 2 billion US Dollars in investments to operate the country’s gas and oils fields, in addition to which MOL is one of the largest employers within the field of extraction.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)