The current SAARC conference has brought Pakistan and India closer than ever before. Both the countries have, for sometime past negotiating SAPTA and SAFTA arrangements.
Pakistan went ahead with providing customs duty concessions to India on 223 items under South Asia preferential trade agreement (SAPTA). Similar concession were provided a couple of months before on 227 items.
There is lot of excitement in Islamabad and it will not be surprising if Pakistan goes ahead with much awaited declaration of granting MFN status to India which has been a bone of discontinuation between the two countries for the past decade or so as India successfully managed to keep Pakistan out of the Indian Ocean rim association of regional co-operation (IOR-ARC) on the pretext of discrimination of trade as according to India, Pakistan did not provide reciprocal MFN status to India.
Pakistan should make it a condition that India should support Pakistan's membership of IOR-ARC on grant of MFN.
Pakistan believes that India being a large country with immense resources will make an adverse trade balance with Pakistan.
In fact, India has almost a billion population and a vast territory. Trade opportunities will always arise if our business community remains alert and continues a survey of the sub-continent.
Experts have drawn conclusion that fears of imbalance are not based on the actual situation of both countries. Smuggling provides an opportunity to the traders which will ultimately be replaced by normal trade.
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