F\aisalabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FCCI) President Dr Khurram Tariq has said Pakistan can achieve its prime political and economic objectives in the fast-changing global scenario through evolution of ‘soft-core’ diplomacy. Addressing a delegation of under-training officers of the 44th Specialized Diplomatic Course of Foreign Services Academy (FSA), he welcomed the guests and said that Faisalabad was only one hundred years old. This city was established by British rulers to colonize and strengthen its administrative writ on this area. He said that the city was designed on the pattern of Union Jack. He also quoted his address to the senate of Pakistan last year in which he had termed it as one of the biggest non garrison cities of Pakistan. He said that cotton was cultivated in abundance in this area and hence the textile industry made tremendous progress here. He said that about one and half years ago, he took over the charge of President FCCI and in his maiden speech, he had unequivocally announced a plan to transform the textile city into ‘tech & style’ by exploiting IT and AI. He said that Faisalabad is the third largest city of Pakistan. “Its urban population is around 3.5-4 million while the total population of the district is around 8.7 million”, he said and added that it is the iconic representation of textile as this city was contributing lion’s share toward textile exports. He said that it has the largest industrial estate sprawling over 10,000 acres of land. He said that earlier the office bearers were elected for a period of one year but it is for the first time that their tenure has been enhanced to two years. About the role of FCCI, he said that we are trying our optimum best to bridge the gaps between government and business community. “We are also enjoying cordial relations with foreign embassies and high commissions as our exporters are frequent travelers”, he said and mentioned the evolution of foreign diplomacy with a focus on economy. He said that we should also focus on soft-core diplomacy by exploiting the inherent edge of sports, food and other sectors. He said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is playing a diverse role in commerce, finance and other fields. He quoted his recent visit to Ethiopia and said that this country was playing a proactive role on the diplomatic front and we should also learn from them in this specific field. He said that we should focus on out of box solutions to promote the soft image of Pakistan instead of sticking to the traditional strategies. He further said that FCCI has 10,000 members representing different associations, trades, sectors and subsectors of the economy. He said that one of our core objectives is to help the government in budgeting in addition to undertaking aggressive business advocacy. He also mentioned some public welfare projects initiated during his tenure and said that one of the major projects is transformation of Faisalabad into Cyberabad. He said that FCCI intends to provide an IT and AI compliant ecosystem so that our young graduates could excel and triple IT exports to the potential international markets. He also mentioned his slogan that “workers’ children should not be a worker” and added that to materialize this dream he has adopted all workers welfare schools in this district. Now we are providing them with missing facilities in addition to skilled teachers, he added. He also underlined the mainstreaming of the differently-able persons and said that he has planned to bring them at par with able bodied individuals. He lamented that most of them are not registered with the government departments; however, we are taking steps to provide them with a five percent share in jobs quota up to the extent of this district. He further said that supportive appliances and tools are also being provided to them so that they could lead a normal life. He said that we have to do much more for the neglected segments of the society and we could not leave this task to the others.