ISLAMABAD: Turkey’s KOC Holding CEO Levent Cakiroglu along with a five-member delegation visited Board of Investment (BOI) and met with BOI Chairman Dr Miftah Ismail and BOI Secretary Azahr Ali Chaudhary on Wednesday. The chairman welcomed the delegation and highlighted the investment opportunities available in different sectors of the economy, including automobile, food and processing, energy, power, LNG, dairy products and livestock, for Turkish investment in Pakistan. Levent informed that KOC Holding was a Turkish investment holding company and KOC Group was Turkey’s largest industrial and services group in terms of revenues, exports, taxes paid, share in Borsa, Istanbul’s market, capitalization and employment generation. “The shares of 16 KOC Group companies are traded on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, together, the groups comprise 113 companies, 90,000 employees, and 14,000 dealers, agencies, and after-sales services people. KOC Holding is the only Turkish company to be listed in Fortune Global 500 list. Fortune Global 500 ranked KOC holding at 248 for the year 2011,” he added. The company has now signed an agreement to purchase/acquire Dawlance, a premium home appliances company of Pakistan worth of $258 million. The BOI chairman informed that the government was encouraging the private sector for setting up industries in Pakistan. Special economic zones (SEZ) have been established to meet the global challenges of competitiveness to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), he added. He said law allows creation of industrial cluster with liberal incentives, infrastructure and investor facilitation services to enhance productivity and reduce cost of doing business for economic development and poverty reduction. He said Pakistan offers to establish special economic zones, which provide 10 years tax holiday for investors and the developers with duty free import of plant and machinery. “The government offered one time exemptions from all taxes on all imported capital goods and exemption from income tax for a period of ten years till June 30, 2020, and five years thereafter for SEZ enterprises,” he added.At the end, Dr Miftah Ismail thanked Levent Cakiroglu and his delegation, and appreciated their efforts and intention to boost investment, trade and economic relation between the two friendly countries. The BOI chairman assured them full support as and when needed.