El Corte inks deal for opening office in Pakistan

KARACHI: Europe's leading and world's 4th largest super store based in Spain, El Corte, has signed an agreement with Firoz International, a Pakistani company, to operate its buying offices in Karachi and Lahore.

According to Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) here on Monday, it is a big achievement as currently El Corte operates its procurement wing of South Asia from India and soon they will start procuring from Pakistan and all future orders will be exclusively executed through Pakistan.

El Corte Ingles Group is interested in increasing its volume of buying and product range from Pakistan.

The opening of the office in Pakistan is also the beginning of better opportunities for Pakistani exports to Spain. The office will also be responsible for introducing new sourcing partners and products from Pakistan.

El Corte has an annual turnover of over $ 25 billion and is trusted name in quality of products and services in European market. It has more than 400 stores under the brand names of El Corte Ingles, Hipercor, Supercor, Opencor etc.

El Corte Ingles annual imports is more than $ 12 billion and 80% of its imports are from Asia.

Opening of El Corte office in Pakistan is a result of an initiative taken by Pakistan's Commercial Counsellor, Embassy of Pakistan and keen efforts of Pakistan's Honorary Investment Counselor in Spain.

It may be noted that TDAP had sponsored and organized a 20-member El Corte delegation's visit to Pakistan in February this year, for analyzing the potential of Pakistan as a reliable sourcing hub.

Borja de la Cierva, director-head of international supply chain, El Corte, who was leading the delegation which had B2B meetings with 272 different Pakistani companies in Lahore, Sialkot, Faisalabad and Karachi and visited 59 selective production facilities in these cities.

According to Director (Sourcing) of El Corte, export orders from Pakistan, since their maiden visit to Pakistan in February 2011 visit, have already exceeded Euro 10 million.

Tariq Puri, Chief Executive TDAP, has expressed his confidence that these export orders are manifestation of TDAP's aggressive marketing campaign and TDAP will continue to strive for creating business opportunities for Pakistani exporters to keep the increasing trend in exports going.

Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";}

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011