The Hindu Business Line : List of more importable items to Pak forwarded

India has forwarded a list of more importable items to Pakistan from India called Positive List in order to intensify economic engagement and boost bilateral trade volume from $1.7 billion to higher level and to plug the current wider scope for diverted trade through third countries.

At the two-day Indo-Pak meeting on economic and commercial cooperation under the framework of composite dialogue that began here on Tuesday, the Commerce Secretary, Mr Gopal K. Pillai, said that while India’s exports to Pakistan amounted to $1348.32 million in 2006-07, Pakistan’s exports to India amounted to $323.19 million.

“If we add the informal trade and the trade taking place through third countries the figures are much larger. There is a strong case for us to see how we mainstream this diverted trade and reduce transaction costs to ultimately benefit the consumer on either side.”

In this context, Mr Pillai underlined the need to introspect by “taking a look at our respective production and demand baskets and identify products for bilateral trade”.

Stating that there is a need to recognise the sectoral overlap in product baskets, Mr Pillai said proper diversification and development of exclusive niche products on a sectoral value chain could help avoid conflicts. He suggested Islamabad to identify 20 products of export interest from India and “we would share the relevant import regime for these products to facilitate better understanding for your exporters and take steps to facilitate trade in those items”.

Mr Pillai said this would render things transparent and help boost trade between the two countries. He added that textiles, engineering goods, electronic goods and a host of other sectors offer opportunities for trade.

The Commerce Secretary said both countries would also need to improve the infrastructure at the designated border crossing points both on the rail and road networks to meet the needs of the business community. Currently, Pakistan maintains a list of importable items from India called Positive List which was augmented from 773 to 1,075 (adding 302 items) in November 2006. Based on the requests from the PHD Chambers of Commerce and Industry and other individual representations a list of 478 wish list for inclusion in the Positive List has been prepared to discuss with the Pakistan side during the meeting, highly placed sources in the Government told Business Line here.

Likely new items

With India facing cement shortage and Pakistan exporting 2.5 million tonnes (mt) out of the 25-mt it produces, new items for trade could include cement, besides other items such as woollen fabrics, shawls, yarn, blankets and readymade garments, refractory items, methyl diethanolamine, textile machinery, rotogravure printing machine, tractors, bicycles and bicycle parts and toughened tempered safety glass and some plastic items not included in the positive list so far, the sources noted.

The Pakistani delegation was led by Mr Syed Asif Shah, Commerce Secretary, who also spoke on the occasion.

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