Pakistan is all set to confer the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to the traditional arch rival India in line with World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) principles that call for non-discriminatory trade relations between the member countries.
Acting in accordance with a bilateral agreement with New Delhi in 6th round of November 14-16 commerce secretary-level talks, Islamabad has completed the required home work to phase out its negative list, containing 636 tradable items, to make its trade arrangements with the Eastern neighbor non-discriminatory.
Having got the federal cabinet’s approval to complete the process of granting the long-denied MFN status to India, the Ministry of Commerce is now awaiting the nod of the former to proceed with the phasing out, envisaged by the two countries by this month (February 2012), of the negative list. The local industrialists, however, are concerned and don’t see reciprocity on the part of New Delhi in this bilateral trade normalisation process which, they fear is one-sided.
“We are granting the MFN status to India which continues to observe protectionism when it comes to the opening of Indian markets for Pakistani goods,” noted local traders and industrialists with concern.
Declaring the current trade normalisation process as a positive move, the traders recalled that India, despite granting the MFN status to Pakistan 16 years ago, was yet to remove innumerable tariff and other trade related barriers in its trade arrangement with Pakistan. “India, despite being one of the world’s largest economies, is a protectionist country unlike Pakistan which is opening up its markets for Indian products without protecting its already-troubled trade and industry,” the traders said.
The stakeholders, traders and industrialists, smell a rate in the intentions of concerned authorities in Islamabad which, they believe, were showing an unprecedented quickness in this particular matter.
“The government officials even tend to bypass the industrialists and other stakeholders in their haste to proceed with the MFN issue,” said an industrialist adding, “And to be honest, we feel being bypassed in some matters.” There are some quarters who believe that Islamabad was following the policy of conciliation towards India which in contrast had always been containing Pakistan on each and every front. “WTO principles equally apply on India which is unwary of the same. The point is whether or not New Delhi has the political will to behave in line with the WTO rules,” said a critique.
In addition to it, he said, Pakistan must keep in mind a very fragile state of its trade and industry which were plagued by longstanding problems like that of energy crises.
“Besides crippling our ailing economy, these problems are playing havoc with the competitiveness of our trade and industry that would find it hard to compete with Indian goods in the post-MFN status regime,” the critique expressed the concern.
