After the flexibility shown by India on the European Union trade concessions, Pakistan has decided to reciprocate the gesture by flexing up to introduce a new trade regime with New Delhi based on negative list instead of the prevalent positive list regime. A statement issued by the Ministry of Commerce said the ministry is in process of switching trade arrangements with India from existing “positive list” to “negative list” of importable items from India in pursuance of the agreements reached during the Commerce Secretary level talks on Economic and Commercial Cooperation between Pakistan and India held in April 2011.
The Ministry of Commerce has already requested all the chambers of commerce and industry and trade associations to identify importable items from India to be included in the “negative list”. Since it is a time bound exercise to be completed by October 15, 2011, all the stakeholders are requested to send their recommendations along with justification for inclusion of the importable items from India in negative list either through respective chambers, trade associations or directly to the ministry. The recommendations for an item’s inclusion in the negative list should include information on tariff lines, along with HS 6 digits code, total production of the recommended item, use of various inputs in production in percentage terms, total employment with factory wise break-up, Pakistan global imports of that tariff line, retail price in Pakistan, national tax number and sales tax number of the manufacturers and any other justification for import ban. During the visit of the Commerce Minister Makhdoom Amin Fahim to India at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Shri Anand Sharma, from September 26 to October 2 both ministers agreed to jointly start efforts for increasing bilateral trade leading it to two times within three years, from current levels of $2.7 billion per annum to about $6 billion. In this regard, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between India Trade Promotion Organisation and the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan.
Both ministers agreed that the bilateral trade liberalisation process should be irreversible and uninterruptible. The Commerce Secretaries of both the countries will be meeting again in November, 2011 where they would decide laying down specific timelines to normalise all trade relationships including dismantling of all non-tariff barriers. Pakistan wants to complete the process on the negative list before the meeting of secretaries. During the last few months, India and Pakistan have constructively engaged towards a liberalised business regime, and they plan to liberalise movement of businessmen before November talks.
