Vice Admiral (R) Ather Mukhar, Pakistan’s Ambassador-designate to Maldives visited Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) and exchanged views with Muhammad Ahmed Waheed President to further improve bilateral trade and economic relations between Pakistan and Maldives. Tahir Abbasi Senior Vice President, Saif ur Rehman Khan Vice President ICCI and others were also present at the occasion. Vice Admiral ® Ather Mukhtar said that Maldives was quite better in tourism while many areas of Pakistan including North Region have great potential to promote tourism and added that promoting bilateral cooperation in tourism between Pakistan and Maldives would be his top priority. He said that Pakistan should focus on improving tourism infrastructure and skills development of people to attract more tourists. He said that providing better facilities to local tourists would entice more foreign tourists to Pakistan. He said that Pakistan can export many products to Maldives including rice, fruits & vegetables and pharmaceuticals and urged that business community should accelerate efforts for promoting exports to Maldives. He assured that Pakistan Embassy in Maldives would extend all possible cooperation in these efforts. Speaking at the occasion, Muhammad Ahmed Waheed, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry said that tourism industry in Pakistan has great potential to achieve rapid growth and close cooperation with Maldives in this area would be beneficial to Pakistan. He said that bilateral trade between Pakistan and Maldives was far less than the actual potential of both countries and its main reason was absence of direct air links between both countries. He stressed that Pakistan and Maldives should focus on establishing direct air links that would improve trade volume between them. He said that Pakistan’s sea food and dry fruits have also good potential for exports to Maldives for which direct air connectivity was needed as trade through sea route was quite expensive between both countries. Tahir Abbasi Senior Vice President, Saif ur Rehman Khan Vice President ICCI, Naeem ur Rehman Piracha, Khalid Chaudhry, Naveed Malik and others also spoke at the occasion and shared useful ideas for improving two-way trade between Pakistan and Maldives.