Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal on Thursday invited Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) member states to integrate their value chains with Pakistan’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and explore opportunities for cross-border industrial clusters, leveraging Pakistan’s preferential trade agreements with China, ASEAN and the Middle East.
He extended this invitation while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the fifth annual two-day CAREC Institute Research Conference, held in collaboration with the University of Sargodha (UOS).
Themed “CAREC Connectivity: Promoting Trade and Trade Facilitation,” the conference brought together a diverse group of national and international stakeholders.
Co-organizers of the event included the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), Pakistan Single Window (PSW), Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), International Road Transport Union (IRU), Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Pakistan International Freight Forwarders Association (PIFFA), and the ECO Science Foundation (ECOSF).
He said the conference was ‘timely and essential’ as in a world reshaped by climate shocks, geopolitical shifts, and technological disruptions, regionalism was emerging as the new realism.
“Today, intra-regional trade among CAREC countries (excluding China) accounts for only 7% of total trade. In contrast, ASEAN countries trade over 22% among themselves,” he said.
This disparity, he said was not due to geography – it was due to underdeveloped logistics, fragmented regulatory frameworks, and limited institutional coordination.
“Geography is not destiny. It is opportunity – if we choose to seize it,” he said quoting a famous economist Paul Collier as saying.
The CAREC region, Ahsan Iqbal said, with a population of nearly two billion and vast reserves of energy, minerals, and talent was not short on potential, stressing the need for a unified development strategy backed by collective action.
Sharing Pakistan new development vision ‘URAAN Pakistan,’ the minister said the vision was based on five strategic pillars including Exports, Equity and Empowerment, E-Pakistan, Environment, Energy and Infrastructure.
This strategy, he said was not isolated from regional ambitions rather aligned fully with CAREC Vision 2030.
Under URAAN, he said, Pakistan was expanding high-value exports like IT, Halal food, and engineering goods. Pakistan’s IT exports, for example, have crossed $3.5 billion and are growing at 20% per year, empowering youth through digital skills, mobilizing green investment, with 10 GW of solar projects in the pipeline under the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), positioning Pakistan as a trade and logistics hub, connecting CAREC to maritime trade via Gwadar and Karachi besides facilitating in trade – From Intent to Implementation.