Pakistan to trim SAFTA ‘sensitive list’

Friday, 14 October 2011 04:12 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

ISLAMABAD: Diverting international trade to South Asia, Pakistan has decided to further liberalise its trading regime with her neighbouring countries especially India under the cover of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

As part of this, the commerce ministry on Wednesday announced to reduce the number of items from the sensitive list under the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) signed on January 6, 2004. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are members of this treaty.

Under SAFTA the member countries have agreed to maintain a list of those items which they do not want to consider for duty reduction on its trading with one another.

However, Pakistan announced to reduce the list of sensitive items in a bid to move for more South Asian integration at least on trade and business level if not politically at the moment.

An official press note of the commerce ministry sought feedback latest by 19 October from all stakeholders over the list of items that were identified to be removed from the sensitive list of SAFTA.

“We have identified 233 tariff lines to be removed from the list. As a result, the number of items in Pakistan’s sensitive list will reduce to 936 tariff lines from existing 1169,” the note stated.

The ministry claimed that the list of items for removal was prepared in consultation with all stakeholders. But at the same time, the ministry said the issue was made public just one week ahead of the deadline to seek feedback from all quarters.

For changing the decades old trade regimes with India, the ministry of commerce had made public the issue just 10 days ago ahead of making final decision and gave a deadline of October 15 to stakeholders for giving final comments or suggestion. The whole issue was confined to the close-door meetings with the selected businessmen.

At the same time, the ministry has given just six days to the general public or stakeholders for feedback on the reduction in sensitive list under SAFTA. This was a major demand from the Indian government asking Pakistan’s bureaucrats to reduce the number of sensitive items under SAFTA, which the ministry of commerce did in a very short time.

The ministry of commerce has placed the list on its website.

According to the commerce ministry statement, as per trade liberalisation programme under SAFTA, the Non-LDCs (Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan) would reduce their tariff to 0-5 per cent by 2013, whereas the LDCs would reduce tariff to 0-5 per cent by 2016.

Each member state retains a ‘sensitive list’, which is not offered for duty concession. At the SAARC platform, working group for reduction in sensitive list was created to work out the modalities for reduction in the lists. The group has held three meetings and accordingly, all the member states have agreed to reduce their sensitive lists at least by 20 per cent.