Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday made a strong pitch for increased India-Pakistan trade that would bring higher investments to the South Asian region.
Addressing the Indo-Pak CEOs Forum business meet here, Mr. Mukherjee asked Pakistan to clearly spell out the items which it would not like to import from Indian traders. “The most important factor to my mind to improve the economic cooperation between the two nations is replacement of the existing positive list by the negative list of goods beyond which Pakistan would permit imports from India,'' he remarked.
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. Pakistan's positive list of importable items from India has been substantially expanded to 1,934 items in September 2009 from 773 in July 2006.
Mr. Mukherjee said Pakistan had not implemented the provisions of maintaining the negative list despite ratification of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA). At the same time, he called for liberalisation of the trade regime in the two countries, improvement in communication and promo ting free movement of goods between the two countries for expansion of bilateral trade. “A more economically integrated and rapidly developing region could generate a peace dividend. Extended trade relationship would reduce the potential for conflict by creating strong constituencies for peace,'' he said. A strong Pakistani business delegation, including leaders from various sectors such as textiles, agriculture and IT, is participating in the meet. Trade between the two countries grew from $251 million in 2000-01 to $2.3 billion in 2007-08, but dropped by 19 per cent to $1.81 billion in 2008-09. Pakistan now allows India to export items like meat, edible oil, cereals, tobacco, chemicals, fertilizers, leather, cotton, silk, coffee, tea and oilseeds. However, India has given the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to Pakistan.
