A major part of the country’s economy is based on foreign remittances and exports, on which Prime Minister Imran Khan always stresses in all his addresses and cabinet meetings. Thus, overseas Pakistanis are the backbone in building the country’s economy as they remit foreign exchange regularly.
Such individuals end up doing great work in their respective fields and gain recognition for their outstanding accomplishments; outside of Pakistan. Despite this, they continue to maintain a strong bond with Pakistan and are interested in making their contribution to the nation, especially financially.
Pakistan greatly benefits from expat Pakistanis who leverage their Western business ties for the overall betterment of Pakistan’s welfare. The overseas Pakistanis have shown their devotion to Pakistan through the continued acts of charity and economic development.
After the tragedy of 9/11, Muslims were faced with the challenge of protecting their lives and property as well as restoring the sanctity of the Prophet (PBUH). However, still, 19 years later, overseas Pakistanis are still dealing with the aftershocks.
The sanctity of the Holy Prophet Muhammad Mustafa (PBUH) is an essential part of every Muslim’s faith. The tragedy of 9/11 badly affected not only the United States but the entire world, especially Muslims, and intensified racism and religious hatred in the world.
In order to eradicate Islamophobia, we started the community service and philanthropy by helping finance the movie: The prophet Muhammad Legacy of a Prophet – documentary that was made to fight racism, anti-Muslim hate that came after 9-11 terrorist attacks.
The documentary movie was played nationwide in America on PBS in 2002. We have been helping Pakistan and Muslim causes for over two decades in Europe, America and China. We have also promoted investment opportunities of Pakistan to European and American institutional investors both public and private especially to push infrastructure investments of Pakistan.
In early 2000s, we had run Asia divisions of American and European Fortune 500 financial services company. In Punjab, we are trying to exports Pakistani farm products and help them export their fruits and vegetables to China.
Our current focuses are: 1) doing joint ventures with Chinese companies for Pakistan, Middle East and North Africa; 2) working on private China-Pakistan Fund to invest in Pakistan as Qualified Foreign Direct Investment; 3) working with Chinese and GCC partners for affordable housing in Pakistan; 4) promoting Pakistani agricultural products and food companies in China, Europe and USA and 5) creating a fund with Chinese and the Middle East investors to invest in startup companies in China focusing on artificial intelligence, facial recognition, virtual reality, financial services technologies, clean technologies and developing next-generation apps.
We have been pushing Pakistani fruits (mangos), vegetables and organic honey to markets to Chinese markets including discussing it with Chinese food importers and Chinese Food Ministry for approval of these exports from Pakistan.
We have also been helping U.S. importers in streamlining Pakistani mango imports for stable sales of Pakistani mangos across the 50 states with working on standardization. We are also routinely supporting Pakistan garment manufacturers to export their products to Europe and U.S.
We are doing this to help create jobs for Pakistanis and for Pakistan to build foreign exchange. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we also supported NDMA, Pakistan Army and other Government entities secure urgently needed ventilators for Pakistan when none were available globally.
We personally donated over $500,000 of virus testing kits, temperature test machines, N95, KN95 and surgical masks to Pakistani Government, Pakistani Army and NGOs. Many of these items were airlifted by Pakistan Air Force planes from China to Pakistan.
Through anonymous donations, we have helped Children Hospital which is part of Jinnah Hospital in Karachi. We have done the same for Sindh Red Crescent especially their blood donation centers where his father Mubarak Shah Zuberi was the founding Chairman.
We are taking every possible measure to rebuild and grow Pakistan and helping those around in need. However, still we face a variety of difficulties and challenges which become acute because of the negligence of authorities concerned.
There is no doubt it will be a long and arduous journey for any government to create favourable conditions and a relationship of trust for overseas Pakistanis, and the Imran Khan-led government is determined to do so.
Imaad Zuberi is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, philanthropist and political fundraiser
