Pakistan's trade liberalisation policies lauded

A western scholar and intellectual, A K Enamul Haq stated that Pakistan's trade liberalisation policies linked with WTO aimed at economic development, increase in per capita GDP, decrease income inequalities, poverty and unemployment. He was addressing a conference 'Troubled Times: Sustainable Development and Governance in the Age of Extremes' organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute.
Enamul Haq said that unrestricted trade regime is favoured with the perception of stimulating economic growth and bridging the socio-economic gap among countries of the World.
He informed the participants that data collected from Central Board of Revenue, Economic Survey and Pakistan Labour Force Survey s revealed that over the time trade liberalisation has contributed positively to employment generation, negatively to GDP per capita and distribution of income, whereas, no effect was observed on poverty in Pakistan.
Enamul Haq stated that market access is a key concern of developing countries within the WTO, as majority of the developing countries are vulnerable in terms of dealing with the growing demand from developed countries to match health, environment and social standards during production, processing and management of industrial and agricultural operations.
He informed the gathering that practical barriers to trade are government's participation and restrictive practices tolerated by governments in trade, state aid, countervailing duties, state trading enterprises, government monopoly practices, customs and administrative entry procedures, anti-dumping duties, customs evaluation, and classification.
Whereas, he added, the technical barriers are regulations, standards and testing certification arrangements, and specific limitation barriers are quantitative restrictions, import licensing, embargoes, exchange control, discriminatory prices, export restraints, measures to regulate domestic prices, export taxes, requirements concerning marking and labelling and packaging.
Ratnakar Adhikari, an international economist, stated that most stakeholders complain that majority of the exportable products face tariff barriers in the developed countries. This is further compounded by the prevalence of tariff escalation, which prevents developing countries in general to export the agricultural products in processed form, he added.
Adhikari said that due to higher quality threshold for the entry of agricultural products into the developed countries market in the guise of protecting human, plant and animal health, consumer protection and environmental protection, developing countries are being subjected to ever increasing non-tariff barriers.
He concluded his speech saying that it is necessary to take some measures both at national and international level to eliminate these barriers.