Waqas Elahi, Deputy Director, Directorate General of Trade Organizations, Ministry of Commerce, Pakistan.
Thank you very much for inviting me to this wonderful meeting. I would like to present the perspective and vision of Pakistan. Pakistan is a developing country. We have quite a few problems that are related to urbanization. And the first challenge is, of course, infrastructure. As you know, cities are growing, developing. And the majority of the population, 50 percent, will be living in cities in the near future. And the development of cities is also our interest. Of course, we are talking about urban construction. People are working, forming the labor market, jobs.
In Pakistan, if you look at the major cities of Karachi (over 23 million people) and Lahore (over 11 million), the urban density in these cities is about 24,000 people per square kilometer. What can we do? Of course, we can learn, adopt the experience of cities like Kazan, which are rapidly developing, and it is good to see that you are also implementing high-rise construction and solving your problems in this way. Several projects that we visited yesterday as part of a specially organized urban excursion are very impressive.
Thank you very much for inviting me to this wonderful meeting. I would like to present the perspective and vision of Pakistan. Pakistan is a developing country. We have quite a few problems that are related to urbanization. And the first challenge is, of course, infrastructure. As you know, cities are growing, developing. And the majority of the population, 50 percent, will be living in cities in the near future. And the development of cities is also our interest. Of course, we are talking about urban construction. People are working, forming the labor market, jobs.
In Pakistan, if you look at the major cities of Karachi (over 23 million people) and Lahore (over 11 million), the urban density in these cities is about 24,000 people per square kilometer. What can we do? Of course, we can learn, adopt the experience of cities like Kazan, which are rapidly developing, and it is good to see that you are also implementing high-rise construction and solving your problems in this way. Several projects that we visited yesterday as part of a specially organized urban excursion are very impressive.
Also important for us is your experience of involving social facilities in this base, green areas, restoration work on historical heritage.
We are a developing country, so there is a lot of experience we can learn from your areas. So I would recommend that the government of Pakistan should organize bilateral cooperation so that the responsible officials at our federal and our regional levels adopt your experience in this way, because we can expect that if this kind of development continues, the city of Kazan in the not too distant future will become one of the largest cities at the level of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
We are a developing country, so there is a lot of experience we can learn from your areas. So I would recommend that the government of Pakistan should organize bilateral cooperation so that the responsible officials at our federal and our regional levels adopt your experience in this way, because we can expect that if this kind of development continues, the city of Kazan in the not too distant future will become one of the largest cities at the level of Moscow and St. Petersburg.