MULTAN, Jan 23rd: Khawaja Jalaluddin Roomi Ex-President of Multan Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI) welcome the Australian High Commissioner Margaret Adamson and her spouse when they reached at Roomi Fabrics to visit it. Roomi asked the High commissioner to provide greater market access to Pakistani products. He said that Pakistan and Australia enjoyed excellent relations, which were based on mutual respect and shared interests. The two side, he added, further consolidate the existing friendly people to people contacts underpinned by the presence of 80,000 strong Pakistani diaspora and around 16,000 students in Australia.Appreciating the Australian Development Cooperation Programme, Khawaja Jalaluddin Roomi said that Pakistan would like to strengthen interaction with Australia in agriculture, livestock and water resource management. Upon this,Australian High Commissioner Margaret Adamson said her country attaches great importance to its bilateral relations with Pakistan.“We have long been friends and want to diversify cooperation in different fields,” she said.She elaborated that the bilateral trade enjoyed its fourth successive year of growth and “we saw exports from Australia to Pakistan grow to almost Australian dollars 1,700 million in two way goads and services trade that is a milestone in maturing economic partnership between the two countries”.“I feel there are opportunities, specifically in education, food, beverage and franchising agri-business and agri-science (dairy, feedlot and commodities) ,” she said. Australian envoy noted that both the countries moving closer in people -to -people relations. About 16000 Pakistani students chose to study in Australia which was one of top three destination choices for Pakistani under-graduate and post -graduate students.During the current year, cotton season in Pakistan was enhanced by an Australian training initiative designed over the time to support up-skilling 2,25,000 Pakistani cotton farmers for making domestic production more competitive in the European markets.Australia began to extend the work already engaged in, with Pakistan in dairy and cotton to feedlots, animal fattening (goat, sheep and beef) and meat supply chain services.Use of technology and expertise from Australia was assisting Pakistan to increase the volume and value of meat production for local and export demand across designing, breeding, feeding, traceability, finishing and processing of meat.She was accompanied by Mr.Merrick Coral, Hugh Boylan, Mateen Amin while Khurram Javed Secretary General of MCCI, Khawaja Hassamuddin and Tariq Hassan.
