Former zonal chairman, PRGMEA, Shehzad Salim has said that the Asian Tsunami of December 26, 2004 killed over 230,000 people in 14 countries. Indonesia was the hardest hit, followed by Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.
In all, the world-wide community donated more than $7 billion in humanitarian aid. In contrast, more than 17 million people were affected from the floods in Pakistan, while more than $7 billion funds required for relief and rehabilitation. After the Asian Tsunami, trade concessions were announced by EU for the affected counties. Focus of these concessions were the developing countries such as Maldives, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia.
Under these concessions, all fishery products were exempted from import duties and for Sri Lanka, 90 percent of exports including clothing were exempted from import duties. In case of Thailand, concessions were allowed for shrimps exports to EU. Indonesia and India were allowed tariff cuts for their textile and shoes sectors respectively. Tariffs for Thai shrimp were reduced from 12 percent to 4.2 percent. Tariffs for Indian textiles and clothing were set at 9.5 percent instead of 12 percent under MFN.
Tariffs for shoes from Indonesia and Thailand were dropped from 17 percent to 13.5 percent. It is worth mentioning that the EU granted these concessions on major items being exported from these countries without any ceilings or conditions.
As a result of these concessions, Sri Lanka's apparel exports climbed from US $997 million in 2004, the year before Sri Lanka was granted GSP+ benefits, to US $1,647 million in 2009 an increase of 65.2 percent and thus EU became top market for Sri Lanka's apparels in 2009, replacing the United States who had been the top market since the inception of the apparel industry in early 1980's. Sri Lanka's export share which was 37.6 percent in 2004 also climbed to 52.9 percent in 2009.
During 2009, with Sri Lanka still enjoying EU-GSP+ concessions, became the eighth leading exporter to EU Market. Following the suspension of GSP+ tariff concession granted to Sri Lanka effective from August 15, 2010, growing number of European buyers are now finding Sri Lanka's apparel increasingly uncompetitive and are shifting their sourcing to rival producers.
United States of America, similarly tabled a bill before the Senate by Republican Senator Gordon Smith, that proposed to cut tariff rates to zero on textile imports to the United States from tsunami-affected Sri Lanka.
Indian shrimp exporters also appealed to the international trade committee (ITC) in the United States for a review of the anti-dumping duty that was slapped on Indian shrimp imports. It reportedly took the ITC less than a week to confirm that export of Indian shrimp to US had indeed been affected, and agreed to accept a formal review petition from India and Thailand right away.
On the other hand, European Union has considerably watered down its scheme of tariff cuts for Pakistan. The final package slashes the period of tariff suspensions to two years with a third year only granted after an assessment of the impact on Europe's textile producers.
The compromise also sets a duty-free quota on most sensitive products on the list: fabrics, towels, women's jeans and socks will lose their duty-free status if exports to Europe rise by more than 20 per cent per year. All remaining items may also lose their tariff suspension if there is a surge in their exports to Europe, under a safeguard mechanism.
The original package of concessions announced by the EU suspended tariffs for 75 items, which accounted for 27 per cent (equalling 900 million euros) of Pakistan's total exports of 3.3 billion euros to its 27 states, for a period of three years starting from January 2011. The tariff concessions were expected to boost Pakistan's exports of these items by 100 million euros a year, according to the European Commission's estimates.
In view of the above, Salim said he thinks it is not wrong when the people of Pakistan ask themselves why we are getting this 'step-child treatment' from the EU and USA especially being a valuable ally in the war on terror as well and having suffered hugely because of it?-PR
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