According to Pakistan’s Ambassador to Italy, Jauhar Saleem, Italy is on set to become a $1 billion export market for Pakistan this year.
According to Saleem, Pakistan had a trade surplus of $372 million in the fiscal year 2021-22 (July-March), up 65 percent over the previous year.
Despite the challenging circumstances brought on by the pandemic, Pakistan’s economy grew by 41% in FY 2021-22 as compared to the previous year. During the first nine months of the current fiscal year, Pakistan’s exports to Italy reached an all-time high of $805 million, according to the Ambassador. The value-added sectors were the key drivers of this expansion, which resulted in a $372 million trade surplus.
Workers’ remittances from Italy reached $639 million in FY 2021-22 (July-March), a record and a 48 percent raise over the previous year, becoming Italy Pakistan’s largest source of remittances in the EU and the seventh-largest in the world. He predicted that the upward trend will continue in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year, bringing remittances from Italian employees to over $1 billion.
Ambassador Saleem underlined the numerous current activities in the areas of investment, industrial, and technical cooperation, and stated that Italian enterprises were interested in investing in the industries of energy, food processing, leather, textile, construction, and furnishing.
He further noted that Pakistan has been included in the Italian Seasonal Work Visa for 2022, which would provide numerous possibilities for our agricultural and service sector people to work in Italy. In 2022, Italy is scheduled to admit 69,700 seasonal workers from several nations to work in the country. He also discussed many projects aimed at improving the well-being of the Pakistani diaspora in Italy.
