Rawalpindi, 2 August 2022 (TDI): Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa met with the Ambassador of Netherlands Wouter Plomp, on Monday.
According to the ISPR, the two officials discussed matters of mutual interests, regional security, and bilateral cooperation.
Furthermore, the COAS commended the Ambassador’s efforts to enhance Pakistan-Netherlands relations. He expressed that Pakistan seeks to boost its ties with the Netherlands in all sectors of mutual interest.
Meanwhile, Ambassador Plomp appreciated Pakistan’s role in maintaining regional security. He further said that he will continue to perform his part in further advancing diplomatic collaboration with Pakistan.
It was Ambassador Plomp’s farewell visit, who served as the Kingdom of Netherland’s Ambassador to Pakistan from 2019.
Pakistan-Netherlands Relations
Pakistan and Netherlands have a long history of diplomatic relations and cooperative relations. The two countries established relations soon after Pakistan’s independence from the British empire.
Contact between the peoples of the two nations goes further back to the era of exploration and colonization when the Dutch East India Company started operations in the Indian Ocean and the Indian subcontinent.
The Dutch embassy in Pakistan was established in 1995. The Netherlands currently maintains two consulates in Karachi and Lahore and an embassy in Islamabad.
From the 1960s onward, Pakistan received Development Cooperation funding from the Netherlands, especially in the areas of water management, environment, education, and governance. The Dutch government made the decision to emphasize and improve trade relations in 2011.
Relations in trade, education, culture, development assistance, and people-to-people ties are strong. Pakistan is the Netherlands’ 13th-largest trading partner globally and its sixth-largest non-European economic partner. To encourage trade between the two nations, Pakistan and the Netherlands signed a bilateral double taxation agreement in 1982.
Thousands of Pakistanis live, study, and work in the Netherlands as part of the national diaspora.
Furthermore, the two countries also cooperate under Pakistan-European Union cooperation mechanisms, as the Netherlands is an active member of the EU.
