Undersecretary Manlio Di Stefano’s mission to Pakistan wound up after a tight two-day schedule of meetings with Islamabad authorities, which started with the Interior Minister, Ijaz Ahmad Shah. With his interlocutor, Di Stefano discussed about cooperating on combating irregular migration flows, as Pakistan is the second country of origin of clandestine migrant flows to Italy. The bilateral meeting offered the opportunity to outline concrete solutions leading to improve cooperation between the authorities of the two Countries on the issue of repatriations.
The Undersecretary then co-chaired the Fourth Session of the Italy-Pakistan Joint Economic Committee together with the Pakistani Minister of Economic Affairs Muhammad Azahar. In 2018, bilateral trade peaked at 1.45 billion euros, with almost a 50% rise from 2014. The Undersecretary welcomed these data and expressed the wish for this positive trend to continue, thus opening new cooperation and investment opportunities.
Moreover, the Undersecretary also met with the Minister for Human Rights and the Minister of Trade, the Chairman of the Board of Investment and the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
