Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is to visit Japan and Hong Kong from coming Monday to Saturday for talks with government and business leaders on bilateral economic and trade relations. His visit to Tokyo and Nagoya in Japan will be in response to an invitation extended by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during last April. It will be his first visit to that country since becoming the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Shaukat Aziz will be in Japan from August 8 to 11 during which he will visit the site of Expo Aichi and will attend the Pakistan Day ceremonies on the last day of his visit.
A cultural troupe from Pakistan is expected to leave here by middle of this week that will perform at the Pakistan Day function.
Besides the government leaders, Shaukat Aziz, according to the Foreign Office spokesman here on Monday, will meet the chiefs of the leading Japanese business houses at a lunch hosted by the latter.
Pakistan and Japan, the spokesman underlined, shared 53 years of history of cordial relations based on "mutual understanding and sincere friendship". Tokyo had played "a commendable role in the economic development of Pakistan and the objective of the current visit was to build upon the understanding", he added.
On his way back Prime Minister Aziz will visit Hong Kong from August 11 to 13 and meet Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Special Administrative Region of China, and also address an assembly of intellectuals and representatives of "think tanks" at the Chinese University.
A meeting of business leaders, chief executives of important multinationals, Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce and members of nearly 30,000 strong Pakistani expatriate community has been scheduled during the visit.
The Foreign Office spokesman said that Hong Kong was an important trading partner of Pakistan with Pakistani exports standing at 592.2 million dollars and imports at 156.2 million dollars.