According to a Recorder Report (March 8), Pakistan and India have agreed to allow each other's shipping companies to lift third country cargo from their respective ports.
This has reference to the Federal Cabinet's meeting on March 2, which, after detailed discussions on the issue, directed the Ports and Shipping Ministry to sign the amended protocol on shipping services with India as soon as possible, hoping that it would improve trade with Bangladesh too. However, the date of signing the amended protocol has yet to be finalised. It will be recalled that Pakistan and India, realising the need of restoring bilateral shipping services, signed a shipping protocol in 1975.
However, later the need was also felt for so amending it as to enable respective shipping companies to lift third country cargo from their ports. But, while Pakistan cabinet approved amendments to the protocol in 1985, India declined to do so, obviously, for political reasons.
As such, the matter rested there until initiation of confidence-building measures to facilitate the ongoing comprehensive dialogue on settlement of all outstanding disputes between the two dangerously armed South Asian rivals who had remained long pitted against each other, of course, to mutual detriment on a widening scale.
It will be noted that the CBMs, beginning with the resumption of Delhi-Lahore bus service, have a long way towards helping to normalise the embittered relations between the two countries with due focus on people-to-contact and increasing mutual trade, along with restoration of road, rail and air links. Needless to point out, a similar approach marked the negotiations on maritime issues.
For during the secretary-level talks on economic and trade co-operation in New Delhi last August, the Indian government indicated its willingness to take up the matter of amendments to the shipping protocol too.
This was followed by technical-level talks in Karachi, in which both sides agreed to incorporate amendments to the protocol as approved by the Pakistan cabinet in 1985, it will also be noted that amendment in the Shipping to pave the way for the two countries to enter into a bilateral 'Maritime Shipping Agreement'. This has reference to the handing over to the Pakistani side of an Indian draft of 'Maritime Shipping Agreement' for consideration at the meeting in December last year. Notably, the two sides agreed to continue discussions for early finalisation of a bilateral Maritime Shipping Agreement, with India agreeing to allow Pakistani seafarers to join its vessels from any Indian port.
It will, thus, be noted that with the signing of the revised 'Shipping protocol' the two countries would be in a position to develop a mutually beneficial relationship in the field of merchant shipping and related maritime activities.
Needless to point out, it will pave the way for meeting the present and future demands of maritime transport, which can be rightly expected not only to enhance tonnage under both the flags, but also result in adoption of competitive shipping rates to help them, meet the maritime challenges of globalisation of world economies too.
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