13/02/2017 (The Nation) - Recently, a report in Express Tribune claimed that Pakistan is the third largest importer of cooking oil after China and India while importing 2.2 million tonnes of oil seeds every year.

Let me be clear that Pakistan has so far invested Rs50 billion in the import, processing and storage industries of edible oil while Malaysia and Indonesia remained two big sources of import of the oil into the Pakistan.

Another source cleared that Malaysia has imposed taxes on export of oil to Pakistan while it is a negation of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Pakistan and Malaysia.

It is hoped that the Pakistani government will engage with Malaysia to remove this anomaly and exploit full benefits of the agreement in place as it is really beneficial for the Pakistani government and Malaysian and Indonesian nations to increase investment in the edible oil industry in Pakistan, as they can take benefit of transit trade to Afghanistan and Central Asian countries via Pakistan.