India asks Pakistan to come out with negative list of imports

In order to improve bilateral trade, India on Tuesday asked Pakistan to clearly spell out the items it would not like to import from Indian traders.

“Most important factors to my mind to improve the economic cooperation between our two nations ... replacement of existing positive list by negative list of goods beyond which it (Pakistan) would permit imports from India,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at the Indo-Pak business meet organised by CII, the ‘Times of India’ and Jang Group.

At present, Pakistan has a positive list of items of imports from India. This creates a major problem for bilateral trade since it becomes difficult to identify items in which Indian exports are not allowed.

The Pakistan’s positive list of imported items from India has been substantially expanded to 1,934 items in September 2009 from 773 in July 2006.

Mukherjee said Pakistan has not implemented the provisions of maintaining the negative list despite ratification of South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA).

The Finance Minister also called for liberalisation of the trade regime in the two countries, improvement in communication and free movement of goods between the two countries for expansion of bilateral trade.