News
Friday, April 29, 2011
Pakistan, India develop roadmap to boost trade
* Two countries agree to focus on establishing working groups to resolve issues
* Decide to undertake ‘new initiatives’ to enable trade of electricity, POL products
By Sajid Chaudhry
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and India on Thursday developed a clear roadmap for trade cooperation, focussing on establishing working groups to resolve issues and reducing non-tariff barriers to enhance bilateral trade and economic cooperation.
A joint statement released by India and Pakistan’s top civil servants for commerce said they decided to undertake “new initiatives” to enable the trade of electricity and petroleum products with energy-starved Pakistan.
Quickly moving towards liberalising trade with India, Pakistan agreed to move towards negative list based trade from the existing positive list based trade regime by October 2011. Few hundred items will be included in negative list and all remaining thousands items will be allowed for import from India under the proposed regime of negative list based trade.
Both the sides also agreed not to allow political and security situation block efforts for promotion of bilateral trade ties by putting in place institutional framework.
At the end of the two-day session, the two sides made a roadmap towards what the Pakistan commerce secretary called “the logical end of the trade talks”. Both the countries formed a “joint working group” and task-specific committees with clear deadlines to resolve all outstanding trade issues.
In a media briefing, Commerce Secretary Safar Mehmood termed the fifth round of talks “much more comprehensive and productive”, as both the countries created institutional mechanism and a clear cut mechanism which would be irreversible.
During the talks, Pakistan recognised that grant of Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India that would help expand the bilateral trade relations. The two countries showed intention to explore the possibility of entering a mutually agreed preferential trade agreement to further promote bilateral trade by extending tariff concessions. Promotion of bilateral investments and cooperation in information technology was agreed besides opening of bank branches in each other’s countries.
“We (both the sides) have agreed to remove non-tariff barriers and all other restrictive practices, said Mehmood.
He said that as a first major step towards liberalising trade with India, Pakistan had agreed to replace positive trade list with negative list by October 2011. He also said that the issue of Afghan transit trade was dependent on the resolution of all outstanding political disputes.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk