Islamabad : Three-day, 18th All Pakistan Gems and Mineral show kick off here Saturday in order to showcase the hidden potential existing in the local gems and stones besides highlighting the issues and challenges being faced the sector as well as the exporters to fully exploit the potential of the these precious minerals.

The event was organized by All Pakistan Commercial Exporters Association (APCEA) in collaboration with Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP), also aiming at to find out the international as well as local match makings for the introduction of modern machinery for extrication of these precious gems and stones to produce standard and quality products, which would help in attracting the huge foreign exchange reserves for the country.

As many as 70 stalls of different stalls were installed in the show, which had showcased precious and semi-precious stones by the gems and stones traders haling across different cities of the country including Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Gilgit.

Many precious stones including sapphire, tourmaline, rubies, peridot and emerald were put on the stalls, which attracted the visitors particularly women as they shown keen interest in different stones and jewellery.

Besides, semi-precious stones like tourmaline, turquoise, aquamarine and topaz and other stones find locally were put on display.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony of the show, Director TDAP Muhammad Irfan said that Pakistan was annually exporting gems and stones worth $3.7 billion, adding that efforts were on to enhance exports by 10 percent every year.

The government, he said would extend all the possible facilities to local exports and would organized regular shows and exhibition every year at local and international level to attract the foreign and domestic investment in this sector.

He said that modern technologies for cutting and polish of gem stones in order to avoid the waste of the precious minerals and producing quality and standard produces to fetch foreign exchange reserves for the country. Addressing the event, Patern in Chief APCEA Haji Mamoor Khan said that Pakistan was blessed with natural resources and it required little attention of the concerned quarters to utilize theses resources.

He informed that APCEA had so far organized 17 events before this in order to promote the exports of local gems and stones. He said that such event was also helping to enhance the interaction among all the stakeholders and discussing the issues and challenges.