Trade to flourish by granting India MFN status: Khar

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Pakistan has formally decided to grant Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India, said Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Friday.
While talking to journalists outside Parliament House, Hina said that Pakistan has decided in principle to grant India MFN status so that trade impediments between the two countries could be removed. She said that by granting India MFN status, trade activities between both the countries would flourish.
“The top-most priority of the country is to ensure uninterrupted dialogue with India so that the resolution of Kashmir could be ensured”, she added.
She further said that dialogue process with India has been initiated after a gap of two years.
“There are a number of achievements regarding relations with India. We have achieved ground on trade with India for the first time in history,” she said.

11 COMMENTS

  1. India will buy more of our Onions and we will buy everything they have to sell. This is what we call trade flourish.

        • The opportunity is enormous Pakistan. I will give you one or two examples. But first, allow me to say that, without any exception, an honest cross-border free trade is always a win-win situation. Whether it is US-Mexico, US-Canada, Germany-France, Italy-Germany, Chez Republic-Slovakia, Poland-Germany, France-Belgium, Belgium-Denmark, Portugal-Spain, Malaysia-Singapore, Japan-Taiwan, — you name it.

          Take Pakistan's Marble industry. For more than a decade China is buying large quantity of marble, granite etc. in unfinished block. China takes them in the mainland, cut tiles, finish and export worldwide. But in since the first day of this trade, china didn't invest back a single penny in developing Pakistan's marble industry. The result? If Pakistan gets a dollar selling it's marble, china makes two on it and they won't like to change it. Please do not misunderstand – this is not a campaign against a all weather friend. That's what chinese trade is – everything is controlled, manipulated and anything but free. Sell the same marble to India (india now-a-days imports). The transportation cost would be less. The biggest thing that will happen is that, the next day, proposals from indian "marble capitalists" are pouring in for joint venture on pakistani quarry owners. The reason: the indian industry, under capitalist system, has to compete amongst themselves for access to Pakistani marble. The result: pakistani industry grows by higher value addition and direct demand and indian industry benefits from direct and reliable sourcing with cost savings on transportation. What i was saying is not a fantasy. This exact same thing plyed out between india and italy between mid 1970's through late 1980's. And today indian marble (finished product) is atleast three times that of italy.

          Pakistan's cotton is another facet. If indian industry wants to buy cotton from Pakistan, that would give Pakistani mill owners a good run for their money and shrink thir short term profit, but producer prices of raw cotton will go up more to provide better return to the actual producers of raw cotton. And that would be a very good thing for Pakistan both economically and socially.

          Don't get scared: indians exports iron ore to china (and korea, japan etc.) at the same time they themselves are on their way to become steel making and consuming giant.

          There are many more items i could mention (cement, dates, pomegranate, surgical equipments, processed food, gem stone – the list goes on) but my comment is already too long. So the last thing i would like to say that all the things i said does not happen over-night. Staying on course is important (and politicians don't mess things up for their own narrow interest).

  2. ofcourse india has alot of things to sell and we have only one or two but we will b benifited too because if we buy something 4 to 5 time costly from other european countries or america.it would be better to have cheap from india. good move if it remain so

  3. These days all over the world there are at least 2 million products to be shared or do business with as per consumption.President Obama greeted the South Korean President Lee and took him to Motor city to create 70 thousand jobs by offering the Koreans to buy Ford and GM.The trade will be equal,here in USA Hundai and Sonata is in great demand and hopefully American cars will do well in South Korea.The point is that due to this job creation is taking place and so many unemployed will be able to earn and make their ends meet.So,Pakistan and India trade will be also on equal basis and It must have been a positive dialogue between Amin Makhdoom and his counterpart from across the border,that this immediate result has come out.This will also help building the dialogue on outstanding issues like Kashmir,Kargil,Water,Border security.drugs and defusing tension and so on as Hina Rabbani has indicated.There are no options left to both countries except to develop a constructive relationship to see that next generation has the basic neccessities and the sub-continent emerges as the hub of agriculture and industry.

  4. It is good move,it will benefit both countries and the main thing is it reduce the high prices of things in Pakistan as we see all the things are costly because we importing from European counties.If we are thinking that grating MFN is or beneficial for India then we are wrong from my point of view as per statics India doing trade with whole world more that 600 billion a year and not even trade whole world i.e USA,FRANCE,ENGLAND,NEW ZEALAND CHINA and many other counties investing in India. so conclusion of this is that both counties going to have benefit fro this but if we thinks that we not going to do trade with India until they solve Kashmir and other issue then maybe there is no day in future i see when it going to resolve.

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