Dubai: After fourteen years of ongoing violence, the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province in Pakistan is promising a safe haven to foreign investors.
“Security and safety is essential for investors, and the violence across Pakistan is going down since the army of US moved out Afghanistan in 2013 and the safety environment will be stabilised in the coming years,” said Imran Khan, Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, a centrist political party in Pakistan, on Tuesday during a roadshow in Dubai. The roadshow was held in Armani Hotel and attended by top government officials and businessmen from Pakistan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
The Government of KPK is looking to attract investments from the UAE worth $5 billion (Dh18 billion).
Pakistan, located next to Afghanistan, has been the focus of a series of terrorist attacks since 2001.
The deadliest terrorist attack in the history of Pakistan took place on 16 December, 2014, in Peshawar, the capital of KPK, where nine gunmen opened fire and killed 145 children and school staff.
However, this year, Khan called on investors to take risks.
“This year the violence rate across Pakistan is the lowest compared to five years ago and this is the best time for investors to start businesses in Pakistan,” he said.
He added that improving laws and regulations is another factor that is important for investment in any market.
“In KPK, the level of governance has been improved more than any other province in Pakistan as a reformation programme has been tackled to upgrade the legal infrastructure overall,” Khan said.
KPK has investment opportunities, and the government is looking to trigger economic development in the area.
Pakistan is highlighting potential investment areas with maximum return including businesses in mines and minerals, agriculture, oil and gas, housing, energy and power, and tourism.
“The investment documents in KPK developed with the purpose to attract investments by identifying different potential sectors with possible investment areas including 20 investment projects in these sectors,” Mohasin Aziz, vice-chairman of Board of Investment and Trade in KPK, told Gulf News.
Pakistan’s foreign direct investment (FDI) grew from $2 billion in 2013 to $2.2 billion in 2014 and is expected to continue on this pace of growth in the coming years, according to Syed Samar Hasnain, executive director of development finance group of the State Bank of Pakistan.
The country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to grow from 4.14 per cent in 2014 to 5.1 per cent in 2015.
The government of KPK is working hard to upgrade the province’s infrastructure and the policies of investments overall to facilitate FDI into the province as well as to boost its economy, Aziz said.
Currently, a large investment worth a billion dollars, mainly from China and UK, is venturing into the potential market of KPK. And the UAE investment in Pakistan has touched $1.5 billion so far, said Sohail Kiani, a Pakistani investor.
Raza Jafar, a UAE-based Pakistani investor and Honorary Investment Counsellor for the government of Pakistan, told Gulf News that Pakistani businessmen in the UAE should be the first to invest in their country to encourage the flow of FDI.
“We already developing mining project with one of renowned Australian company, FMG, and waiting the Pakistani government to come out with new policies that allow further protection and facilitation for investment in KPK,” he said.
