Pakistan an important country for Italy: Ambassador Andreas Ferrarese

Staff Writer

Islamabad: Ambassador of Italy to Pakistan Andreas Ferrarese said this week that his country keeps Pakistan in a high priority and desired to translate the friendship in to a partnership.

In a media interaction, the envoy said the present trade figures were below the potential as the two countries have always been friends.

He said the trade figures were about $ 2 billion which were much below the potential. “I was in Lebanon and with its population of four million people, trade was $1.2 billion. So there is a lot of room for bilateral trade to grow,” he remarked.

He mentioned that Pakistan’s main exports are of textile, leather, rice and ethanol. Imports were $521m. They were mostly of machinery, petroleum products, vehicles, iron and steel and pharmaceuticals.

Ambassador Ferrarese said Italy had a community of 200,000 Pakistanis. “About 140,000 are documented and 60,000 are being documented,” added the Ambassador.

He said Italy wanted to attract rich Pakistanis who spend their summers abroad as well. “You have 30 million people that are rich,” he said, speaking about the competition among European countries that vie for Pakistani tourists — leisure as well as health. Well-off people go to foreign hospitals. “Why should someone go to London for an operation and not Milano,” he questioned.

Ambassador Ferrarese said that given that about 30,000-35,000 students go abroad to study every six months, countries are interested in attracting students from Pakistan. Until recent times, Italian universities taught in the national language, which was a bottleneck.

But now more courses are being offered in English. Italy offers good public-sector universities that cost roughly as much as a degree from the Lahore University of Management Sciences or the Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture, he highlighted.