Pakistan has decided in principle to grant Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar informed the National Assembly on Wednesday. She was responding to a supplementary question during the Question-Answer Hour in the Lower House of parliament. Hina said Pakistan wanted that the dialogue process with India be uninterrupted and uninterruptible. “At present the environment for dialogue process, restarted after a gap of two years, is very much conducive and we want consistent and incremental movement towards the resolution of all issues between the two countries,” Hina said, adding that Pakistan had decided to grant MFN status to India and India had promised not to block Pakistan’s trade with the European Union.
“The top-most priority of the country is to ensure uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue with India so that the resolution of core issue of Kashmir can be ensured. There are a number of achievements regarding relations with India. We have achieved ground on trade with India,” the minister said. Citing example of the claimed conducive environment, the foreign minister said the Indian foreign minister for the first time in history had attended a reception hosted by the Pakistani foreign minister in New York. Pakistan and India are negotiating opening up bilateral trade. The main impediment in the opening up
of trade is the non-tariff barriers (NBT) imposed by India on Pakistani products even though it had granted MFN status to Pakistan in 1999.
Islamabad reciprocated NBTs by withholding MFN status to New Delhi, but maintains a positive list for trade with the neighbour. During the recent trade ministers’ talks, it was decided that both countries will jointly work to more than double their bilateral trade from current level of $2.7 billion to over $6 billion per annum within the next three years. They plan to achieve this by grant of MFN status to India that will allow replacement of the positive list with negative list while New Delhi will remove the NTBs.
Meanwhile, to another question, Hina said Pakistan wanted good relations with India by remaining committed to its principled stance on Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with the will of the Kashmiri people. She further said the Jammu and Kashmir dispute had been discussed during all bilateral interactions between the two prime ministers during the past three years, as well as at the ministerial level.
Pakistan ready to grant MFN status to India
