PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad says Pakistan has expressed interest in importing more palm oil from Malaysia.
This was conveyed during his meeting with visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at Perdana Putra here today.
“We did talk about sales of palm oil and Pakistan is quite ready to import more palm oil from Malaysia,” said Dr Mahathir in a joint press conference with Imran Khan after the meeting.
Agreeing with Dr Mahathir, Imran Khan said Pakistan noticed that India had threatened to cut palm oil imports from Malaysia for supporting Kashmir.
“Pakistan will do its best to compensate for that,” he added.
It was reported that last month, India restricted imports of refined palm oil and asked importers to avoid purchases from Malaysia after its criticism of India’s actions in Kashmir and a new citizenship law.
On another note, Dr Mahathir said Malaysia hoped its investment in Pakistan would go further into other engineering businesses after national carmaker Proton invested in a manufacturing assembly plant in Pakistan.
“We find that Pakistan has a big population of 200 million and obviously there are lots of their needs which can be produced within Pakistan itself on a joint venture with Malaysia,” he said.
In March last year, Dr Mahathir and Imran Khan witnessed the symbolic groundbreaking ceremony for Proton’s manufacturing assembly plant in the country. Located near Karachi in Sindh province, it will be Proton’s first plant in the South Asian region.
Supporting Dr Mahathir’s call, Imran Khan said Pakistan is located strategically right now.
“Pakistan has access to the Chinese market through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a special economic zone to invite investments, which can export products to China,” he said. – Feb 4, 2020, Bernama
