PM Khan, President Erdogan meet in Ankara; discuss strengthening economic ties

Prime Minister Imran Khan met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Presidential Palace in Ankara on Friday during his first official two-day visit to Turkey.

The leaders discussed enhancing of relations and strengthening of economic ties between Pakistan and Turkey.
The prime minister is accompanied on the trip by Minister for Foreign Affairs Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Finance Minister Asad Umar, Minister for Plan­ning, Development, and Reforms Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtyar, Adviser to the PM on Commerce, Textile, Industry and Production Razak Dawood and Special Assistant to the PM on Overseas Pakistanis Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari.

According to Turkish daily Yeni Şafak, the premier in a meeting with Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and ministry officials said that Pakistan and Turkey have agreed to cooperate in the field of health by setting up a task force.
The premier also visited the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — founder of modern Turkey — where he laid a wreath and signed a formal guest book, Yeni Safak reported.

As per the report, in his message, Prime Minister Khan wrote that Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had described Ataturk as “one of the greatest men who has ever lived”.

Earlier in the day, the prime minister met with a delegation of the Turkey-Pakistan Business Council of the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey.

While addressing the delegation, the premier said that Pakistan in the 1970s “went wrong because we had a socialist mindset which became a deterrent to wealth creation.”

The premier continued that through the socialist regime stepped down in the subsequent decades, the mindset prevailed among the bureaucracy. He added that the PTI-led government, however, supports investments and is taking measures to create money-making opportunities.

He assured the Turkish business leaders of an investor-friendly environment in Pakistan under the PTI government. “We, as a government, are now making every effort to remove impediments in the way of investments,” he said, adding that a separate cell has been established at the Prime Minister Secretariat to monitor the process.
“We have already discussed the issues being faced by Turkish investors in Pakistan,” he said, adding that the current government’s top priority was the export sector.

The prime minister referred to the Chinese model as his inspiration for governance. “They [China] have taken 700 million people out of poverty in the last 30 years. Our main concern is also to take people out of poverty.”

It is expected that the prime minister’s visit to Turkey will bring some respite in the prevailing economic crunch in Pakistan as some memoranda of understanding on trade and investment are likely to be inked between the two sides.

Invitation to invest
In a late-night address on Thursday to the Turkish business fraternity in Ankara, Prime Minister Khan invited Turkish businessmen and investors to invest in various fields and industries in Pakistan, including construction, tourism and exploration of natural resources.

He said that his government had streamlined the governance system and removed red-tapism and hurdles in Pakistan to facilitate foreign investors. “We want to provide ease of doing business to the businessmen and investors for wealth and jobs creation,” he said.

The prime minister invited Turkish investors and construction firms to invest in his government’s five-year plan of building five million houses.

Earlier, the prime minister and his delegation arrived in Konya.

To pay homage to Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, the prime minister and his delegation visited the great Sufi saint’s mausoleum. He also visited the symbolic grave of Allama Iqbal located in the graveyard where Maulana Rumi’s mau­soleum stands.

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