Tripoli, 24 August:
Pakistani companies and workers are gearing up to return to Libya.
Major construction companies from Pakistan have reportedly . . .[restrict]secured reconstruction contracts in Libya. These firms have now put out a request via Pakistan’s Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (Unisame) for subcontractors to work with them.
Unisame President Zulfikar Thaver has urging small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan to take advantage of the business opportunities Libya currently offers. Contracts will be mainly in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering but subcontractors will be needed in many areas of the construction industry.
Thaver also mentioned that there could be mutually beneficial opportunities for Pakistani businesses in other areas, noting a demand for engineering goods, textiles, general merchandise and foodstuffs. Unisame have called upon the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan to support any SMEs interested in doing business with Libya.
The call for SME’s in Pakistan to support larger contractors from their country on projects in Libya, will not be music to the ears of local firms. There is already some discontent among Libyan companies who maintain that they are not being given the opportunity to work as subcontractors on deals won by large foreign contractors.
Last April one business, The Architectural Company for Aluminium and Glass Works Ltd (ACAGW) filed a complaint with the Prime Minister’s office and the Ministries of Interior and Economy, claiming that local firms were being discriminated against by outside contractors, who preferred to hire sub-contractors from their home countries.
Before the Revolution plans were underway to increase numbers of Pakistani workers in Libya, after numbers of migrant workers had dropped from some 150,000 in the 1970s to a mere 10,000 in 2009. In May 2009 Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari made a diplomatic visit to Tripoli where six Memorandums of Understanding were signed, including one for a cooperation in manpower.
Reservations about Nato’s involvement with the Revolution, and close links between Zadari’s Pakistan Peoples Party and Qaddafi, meant that Islamabad’s formal recognition of the NTC was somewhat tardy, coming only in November 2011. [/restrict]
