China welcomes Pakistani agricultural products, expands bilateral trade through land transportation: Wang Wenbin

BEIJING, June 8: China on Tuesday welcomed quality agricultural products from Pakistan to enter its market and stands ready to continue to work with Pakistan to boost bilateral trade through land transportation.

As all-weather strategic cooperative partners, China and Pakistan have engaged in close cooperation in trade and other fields, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in response to a question raised by APP about import of seafood through land route.

Last week, Pakistan first-ever seafood cargo container arrived in Kashgar city of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region through Karakoram Highway.

This is the first time that seafood containers from Pakistan have been transported by road from Karachi to Kashgar city along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

“We welcome quality agricultural products from Pakistan to enter China’s market and stand ready to continue to work with Pakistan to boost our trade through land transportation, achieve sustainable growth, bilateral trade and deliver more benefits to our two peoples,” he added.

While commenting on the seafood export to China, Pakistan Ambassador to China, Moin u Haque said that Pakistani and Chinese governments were making joint efforts to bring more Pakistani seafood and agriculture products through Karakoram Highway to the Chinese market.

“We are working together to bring more Pakistani seafood and agro products through this land route to the Chinese market,” he said.

As the world second largest consumer market, China embraces more high-quality Pakistani products exported to China.

Ambassador Haque said that facilitating trade and exports of Pakistan high-quality products through Khunjerab border was Pakistan-China shared objective.

A representative from the Pakistani transport company said that it was the first attempt at bilateral cross-border road transport business in partnership with a Chinese firm.

He noted that the shipment cost by truck was far below that of air transport, and had simpler customs clearance procedures.

In addition, shipment by road shortened transport time to eight days, which was suitable for small-scale and point-to-point logistics, while the sea transport from Karachi Port to Yangshan Port in Shanghai took nearly a month.