The Embassy of Italy in Islamabad and the Consulate of Italy in Karachi, with the support of AICE Milan, the Italian Development Committee (IDC) and Italian Trade Agency, has organized ‘Doing Business with Italy, Second Edition’. It is centered on a seminar, a series of sectorial networking, B2B meetings and visits to local relevant industrial plants. It will start in Karachi and then continue in Lahore. In the past two years, the commercial exchange between Italy and Pakistan has increased at a rate of about 50% each year, and Italian companies are now looking at Pakistan as an interesting market, full of opportunities.
Therefore we have invited Pierantonio Cantoni and Giovanni Di Nardo, representatives of AICE Milan,an association of Italian companies of different sizes, in various sectors, to give an overview of Italy from an economic point of view, focusing on various sectors of certain interest for the Pakistani business community, such as agricultural machinery, waste management, food and agricultural products, packaging, leather and marble etc. The companies from Italy covered different sectors: Donatella Pomari of Ottolina (Italian company), distributor of coffee, also looking for franchising possibilities for cafes in Pakistan; Alistair Robert Newell of UBI banca, one of the biggest Italian banks, interested also in asset management and insurances; Ezio Dell’Oroof Automazioni Ties srl, a leading company in the industrial automation sector; Primarosa Zampieron, Salvatore Di Meo and Luigi Luciano of Medheca Trade, with a range of products in the pharmaceutical, nutroceutical and cosmoceutical sectors and Federico Cellini of Italmec, a world-leading company producing mechanical manipulators for all industrial and production lines.
A series of sectorial networking sessions, B2B meetings and visits on site have given the Pakistani business community the opportunity to interact directly with the representatives of these Italian companies. But more in general, the possibilities of interactions between Italian and Pakistani companies were explored in depth. The representatives of AICE, once back in Milan, will work on the requests, needs and inquiries by the Pakistani companies, and will create business opportunities with Italian counterparts. In this respect, the MoU signed with IDC (Italian Development Committee) is of paramount importance.
The response of the Pakistani business community was extremely encouraging: 100 participants to the seminar and several B2B meetings organized with the members of the delegation have demonstrated that there is a significant interest in doing business with Italy. With the second edition of this seminar we have consolidated the ties between the Italian and Pakistani business communities, paving the way for more frequent visits and more fruitful collaborations in the months to come.