Founder Chairman of Pak-US Business Council Iftikhar Ali Malik on Wednesday urged the US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who is currently visiting Pakistan, for creating opportunities for joint ventures between the two countries in the economic sphere and duty-free direct market access in the wake of war against terrorism.

Malik said in a statement the US should convene a meeting of Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) to pave the way for result-oriented progress.

"There is already a GSP-Plus status for Pakistan in the US, but new steps could be taken for deriving maximum benefits from the trade preferential facility," he added.

What Pakistan needed was to follow the model of joint ventures on the pattern of Egypt and some other African countries to enhance trade ties with the world's largest economies like the US economy, he said.

The last meeting of TIFA was held in May last year in which both sides had discussed ways to improve access to products such as agricultural goods and medicines in the markets of the two countries, he added.

Malik said Pakistan had been keen to explore potential trade concessions so that it could import more US cotton in return for preferential access to US market for its apparel export.

A preferential trade agreement (FTA) could be a long-term goal because of the complexity involved in the process, he further said and added that the TIFA framework provided an institutional mechanism to carry forward those discussions and come up with new ideas.

The chairman of Pak-US Business Council said the US should remove the bottlenecks in bilateral investment treaty. "It is now imperative that the US should offer same package and incentives which it offers to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in textile exports, such as duty concessions and market access," he said.

"There must be an incentive package for Pakistan for being a frontline state in combating terrorism with the US," he said.

He said that Pakistan is a time-tested friend of USA, and it suffered irreparable economic losses running into billions of dollars in the war on terror in the region.

Malik further said that visa restrictions should be eased for Pakistani businessmen and exporters, and joint efforts were needed to further cement the existing economic ties between the private sectors of Pakistan and US.