BEIJING, July 27 (INP): A China-Pakistan drone conference held here in Pakistan Embassy on Thursday with theme of building a viable drone industry in Pakistan. Pakistan Ambassador to China, Moin ul Haque said that unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs) is being used in many industries to ease the life of people. For instance, disaster Management, smart cities, policing, and agriculture sector are using these technologies. “In recent years, it has been a lot of focus on economic operations within the IT industry, China Pakistan Economic Corridor, being the flagship project of BRI, is helping Pakistan and has helped Pakistan economic transformation, infrastructure, industry, Special Economic Zone have all been developed under this framework. we are also focused on Pakistan’s strategic infrastructure, scitech and new emerging technologies.

Now, we have a special working group on IT under CPEC”, the ambassador mentioned. “We have agreed to launch China-Pakistan digital corridor also, as well as we made national drone policy and establishment of civil drone regulatory authority in Pakistan has also been under our consideration. In Pakistan, the National Center for Robotics and Automation (NCRA) is working on development of drones related solutions and technologies, with the support of a series of dedicated drone labs, including UAV dependability lab, swarm intelligence lab, agriculture statistics lab, and robot design and development lab”, Haque added. Chairman Yang, World UAV Federation told the audience that World UAV Federation was founded in 2017. More than 36 countries in Asia, Europe, North and South America have joined the Federation as local chapters.

“As mentioned in the LTP, agricultural development is one of the key cooperation areas, where UAVs can work in several aspects like breeding, disease prevention and control. That is to say, the partnership in the drone area will be beneficial to CPEC construction”, he mentioned . He invited all participants to attend coming events, including CPSE 2023 and DCW 2023, held in October 25-28, DWC and UAV Expo next year. According to statistics, China's drone enterprises provide various services to more than 100,000 villages, towns and communities in 30 provinces, with about 250,000 plant protection drones in an area of more than 800 billion SQM systems. “According to Morgan Stanley, the value of the global urban air mobility market will reach 9 trillion US dollars in 2050, and China expects the drone cargo market to be around 200 billion by 2024 and 20,000 to 3 trillion RMB by 2030.

To build urban low altitude airway networks to support the large-scale commercial development of UA applications, and the low-altitude economy represented by UAVs are expected to become a new engine for social and economic growth,” Yang emphasized. Addressing in the conference, Ghulam Qadir, Commercial Counsellor at Pakistan embassy said nascent development of bilateral cooperation in the field of technology is essential for Pakistan. Qadir said Pakistan is going to organize largest agricultural exhibition next month, in which drone manufacturing industry will find a place and many invited drone companies will display products.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP) — Pak-China