India's move to withdrawing MFN status will have no impact on Pakistan

KARACHI: FPCCI Businessmen Panel said on Saturday that if India wants to withdraw the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status towards Pakistan, it will have no impact on the country.

Secretary General (Federal) Ahmad Jawad said: "Pakistan’s CPEC and other investment projects are itself a pressure on Indian government, and that’s why it has put blame on us time and again through Pulwama and Pathankot incidents because they want to isolate us economically."

Jawad said MFN is a treatment accorded to a trade partner to ensure non-discriminatory trade between two countries vis-a-vis other trade partners. "The importance of MFN is shown in the fact that it is the first clause in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Under WTO rules, a member country can not discriminate between its trade partners." If a special status is granted to a trade partner, it must be extended to all members of the WTO, but unfortunately, we didn’t see to establish proper trade relations from India in the last years.

He briefed MFN essentially guarantees the most favourable trade conditions between two countries. These terms include the lowest possible trade tariffs, the least possible trade barriers and very crucial to trade relations– highest import quotas. The disclaimer only requires equal treatment to all Most Favoured Nations, “but yet Pakistan exports to India remained bleak despite given us MFN status from the last twenty three years.”

The MFN status was accorded to Pakistan under WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to which both India and Pakistan are a signatory. The principal states that each of the WTO member countries should “treat all the other members equally as ‘most-favoured’ trading partners”. Secretary General (Federal) Ahmad Jawad said: "Pakistan’s CPEC and other investment projects are itself a pressure on Indian government, and that’s why it has put blame on us time and again through Pulwama and Pathankot incidents because they want to isolate us economically."

The MFN status was accorded to Pakistan under WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to which both India and Pakistan are a signatory. The principal states that each of the WTO member countries should “treat all the other members equally as ‘most-favoured’ trading partners”.