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| Sunday, 13 March 2005 |
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Pakistan urges India to lift all trade barriers Islamabad, Sunday. (UNI) Pakisan's Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan has urged India to remove restrictive trade policies, like non-tariff barriers, which inhibit export growth from Pakistan, to allow consideration of other issues, like the Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) status. "The government has identified sectors, with detailed explanations, where we feel level playing field does not exist for our exports to India," The News quoted the Minister as saying here. These issues were identified by the professional study groups constituted by the government, as part of the Joint Study Group between the two countries, which met recently in New Delhi. Islamabad is particularly complaining of tariff, non-tariff and para-tariff issues, which render Pakistani exports uncompetitive, despite New Delhi's decision to grant MFN status to Pakistan. The mismatch in policies allowed India to become the 11th largest exporting country to Pakistan in 2003-04, with $ 382.4 million exports, whereas Pakistani products could not get even one-third of it in the Indian market. The Joint Study Group discussed trade regimes of both countries in order to see how issue of trade imbalance between India and Pakistan could be addressed. The group also identified and examined the factors owing to which exports from Pakistan to India were lacking. Humayun said the government has informed India that progress on other issues was possible only after satisfactory resolution of the issues identified by the study group. He also said that trade talks under the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) were on track, despite postponement of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation's (SAARC) summit at Dhaka. The Minister said special committees are working on the list of sensitive items, several, different proposals are under consideration for compensation to least developed countries, such as Bangladesh and Nepal and other issues were also moving ahead. (Courtesy The Hindu) |
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