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Pakistan is committed to normalising trade relations with India and would work to remove all the impediments, said Pakistan High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir.
“It is important that both countries reach a point where it would be possible to resume the composite dialogue process as trade liberalisation is getting delayed due to the stalled talks,” Bashir pointed out speaking at a lecture on ‘Normalising India-Pakistan trade relations’ organised by research body ICRIER. The recent meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was encouraging, the High Commissioner added.
India and Pakistan had started negotiations to normalise trade ties in January 2011 and had made several concessions for each other before the talks came to an abrupt halt early this year due to violence across the Line of Control.
Pakistan is yet to extend Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India by allowing import of all products across the border although it now allows 6,800 items from the country, up from about 2,000 items when the process started.
India, too, has to extend lower tariffs to Pakistan that it offers to other South Asian countries on key products such as textiles, although it had given its neighbour MFN status way back in 1995.
Both countries have to focus on the gains that would come out of the trade liberalisation process, pointed out former Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar who initiated the trade dialogue between the two countries.
Integration
Liberalisation would help in a number of ways in the form of greater industrial integration, trade between the two Punjabs and trade in petroleum and power, to just name a few, Khullar said.
“We should be harnessing the position of proximity,” Khullar added.
Zafar Mehmood, former Commerce Secretary, Pakistan, who was at the helm of affairs when the dialogue process began, expressed optimism that it would resume soon.
“Our leaders had the courage and long-term vision way back in 1947, when the Kashmir problem had already started, to have normal trade relationship. We can do it again,” he said.
Bilateral trade between India and Pakistan is currently at about $2.7 billion. According to ICRIER, the countries have the potential to increase it over 20 times.
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