MoC sidelining TDAP in major trade dealings

With country's trade being the ultimate sufferer, the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) and Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) are at loggerheads in a quest for power. TDAP, an autonomous body, which is responsible for promotion of country's exports, has long been neglected by the MoC in major foreign trade deals, sources said. The row between the two government bodies was not only badly affecting the performance of the ministry but also the country's export and trade promotional activities.
According to the sources, the ministry had neither asked TDAP for proposals for the current trade dealings with European Union (EU) in Brussels, nor the Authority was taken onboard in the six-month talks with EU for trade concessions. The distance between the ministry and the authority is said to have widened so seriously that the Secretary commerce had even not invited the Chief Executive TDAP in a meeting with exporters held at the authority's head office on September 14 before leaving for Brussels, they alleged. The move, sources claimed, was aimed at to lessen the importance of the authority as autonomous body.
Though, according to the TDAP's Ordinance, the authority, enjoying the broader ways of trade promotion, policy making, research and others was responsible for achieving synergy in development of the country's exports, the ministry was taking the most of the affairs into its hand making the trade over-centralised.
Contrary to the situation in the country, they said, the trade bodies in most of the countries were dealing with international trade agreements, understandings, on better technical grounds. In the countries like Iran, Sri Lanka, Malaysia etc the liberalised/autonomous bodies were dealing with all the trade related activities domestically and internationally.
Intestinally, against the agreed terms in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the authority and its counterpart in Iran, the MoC had received less space in an international exhibition in Iran, when the ministry itself had signed the final agreement with the foreign country without taking necessary feedback from TDAP, sources said.
They said that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari should take serious notice of the row between, as it could badly affect the country's export. It is worth mentioning here that a meeting of high ups of the ministry and TDAP called in Islamabad by Federal Minister for Commerce Makhdoom Amin Faheem on January 15 to resolve disputes between the two government bodies, was postponed for unknown reasons. Besides the dispute, the fate of TDAP, in the absence of its Board of Directors, Financial Rules, and dysfunctional ordinance, was also hanging in the balance.