Birmingham's links to Pakistan can aid recovery

Mar 30 2009 by Anna Blackaby, Birmingham Post

Birmingham’s large Pakistani community and expertise in Islamic finance means the region has an “enormous advantage” in building trade links with Pakistan, a top diplomat has said.

Speaking during a visit to Birmingham, the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, Robert Brinkley, highlighted the areas of opportunity in Pakistan’s economy, such as power generation, financial services, healthcare and education, and said Birmingham was well-placed to exploit these growth areas.

But he admitted the current security situation in Pakistan was likely to damage trade links between the two countries as many British businesses had been put off investing there owing to the increasing frequency of terror attacks.

Highlighting the areas of expertise which are needed in Pakistan, Mr Brinkley pointed to Islamic finance as a growing sector, which plays to Birmingham’s strengths as home to the Islamic Bank of Britain as well as a strong group of professional services firms specialising in Sharia-compliant financing.

He said: “Within the UK we are specialists in Islamic finance, and Birmingham is a big part of this, and this is certainly an area of interest in Pakistan.”

He added that Birmingham was in a good position because of its big Pakistani population to build business links more easily with the country.

“The Pakistani community that we have in Britain, and in particular this region, offers an enormous advantage as a bridge into Pakistan.

“Starting off with the language, we have got people who speak Urdu or Punjabi. English is one of the official languages in Pakistan but it is only really spoken by the educated top five per cent of the country. If you have people who speak Urdu then that is a major advantage.”

But Mr Brinkley said that despite the opportunities that exist in Pakistan, the question of security, brought about by a surge in suicide bomb attacks in the last couple of years, was still a major issue for foreign companies looking to invest there.

“The security situation has got worse over the last couple of years – in 2007 and 2008 there were 60 suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan and that figure is about ten times more than in the years before that,” he said.

Mr Brinkley said a lot of the bombings had been in tribal areas near Afghanistan and in the north-west of the country, but pointed to the attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last September which shook the international business community in the country.

“That hotel is one of the only two major international hotels in the city and of course that is not good for businesses,” he said.

“I speak to quite lot of British businesses and banks that are already present in the country and they are not running away. But those who are not already there and are thinking about investment in the country are being turned of by the security situation,” he said.

Mr Brinkley’s visit to Birmingham was part of a drive by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to aid recovery and help the UK return to growth.

•For details see www.fco.gov.uk