Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Trade and Integration of Kazakhstan Serik Zhumangarin met with a governmental delegation of Pakistan in Astana on Wednesday. The meeting participants outlined the prospects for cooperation in energy sector, in particular, in gas transit using the capacities of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline.
Businesses in Pakistan are interested in cooperating with Kazakhstan in the oil and gas, banking, agriculture and other sectors, the Press Service of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan said in a statement on the meeting.
"Our demand for energy resources is growing every year. Pakistan's market is very capacious, with a population of over 200 million people. We have no minerals, but we have favorable transportation links, railway infrastructure," the Federal Minister of Industry and Production of Pakistan Syed Murtaza Mehmood said.
In addition, the Pakistani side expressed its readiness to provide Kazakhstan with access to the sea and to the markets of the Persian Gulf through its Gwadar port.
At the end of the talks, the sides agreed to discuss these issues in detail at the 11th meeting of the Joint Intergovernmental Commission to be held in Islamabad in December this year.
The TAPI pipeline is expected to carry 33 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas each year along a route stretching 1,800 km from Galkynysh, the world's second-biggest gas field in Turkmenistan, to the Indian city of Fazilka near the Pakistan border.
