BEIJING: Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia was very successful and fruitful and it has further consolidated the all-round strategic cooperative relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
These views were expressed by Cheng Xizhong, Visiting Professor at Southwest University of Political Science and Law and senior Fellow of the Charhar Institute in a statement issued here on Tuesday. He observed that the visit reflects Pakistani government’s paradigm shift from geopolitics to geo-economic cooperation.
During the visit, the two sides discussed in depth the docking between Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and “Naya Pakistan, and reached a high level of consensus. Both lay emphasis on economic opportunity and diversity, domestic growth, modernization and development, and trade linkages and connectivity.
The Chinese scholar said that during the visit, PM Imran Khan attended the first Saudi-Pakistan Investment Forum wherein he stressed the importance of engaging the private and corporate sectors of the two countries to realize the untapped potential in the fields of trade, business, and investment.
“I believe that the Investment Forum would usher in a new dynamism in the investment cooperation between the two countries,” he added. He said that the improvement of Pakistan’s security environment, the rapid economic recovery, and the smooth progress of the building of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor(CPEC) have increasingly strengthened the investment confidence of the Middle East countries, including Saudi Arabia, in Pakistan.
Cheng Xizhong remarked that both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are important Muslim countries. The strengthening of strategic cooperation between the two countries is conducive to the unity of the Muslim world to jointly meet the challenges of the external and regional powers.