Indian and Pakistani officials will meet on Tuesday (tomorrow) to fine tune the mechanism of cross-Line of Control (LoC) trade in Jammu and Kashmir, including urgent redressal of issues arising out of illegal practices. The meeting is taking place in the backdrop of recent tension stirred by the arrest of a driver from Azad Kashmir for alleged smuggling of ''brown sugar'' worth Rs1 billion on January 17.
The arrest resulted in disruption of the trade between the two sides, which resumed last week. Following resumption of trade in Kashmir, the two sides had agreed to hold a Joint Working Group meeting to make a holistic review of trade along the LoC.
In view of this, the two sides will be meeting on March 4 where Pakistani side will be represented by Director General (South Asia) Riffat Masood and Indian side will be headed by a Joint Secretary from Ministry of External Affairs.
Ahead of this meeting, internal deliberations were held with various stakeholders of the LoC trade over the agenda for the meeting.
During the talks, it was decided that India will try and work out a formula with Pakistan for increasing the volume of trade by including some more items in the import and export list.
At present, the two sides have agreed for trade of 21 items including carpets, rugs, honey, saffron, medicinal herbs from Uri to Chakotti (AJK), precious stones, Peshawari leather chappals, foam mattresses, shawls, stoles and black mushrooms from AJK to IHK.
The Indian side may again raise its demand for routing the cross-LoC trade through banking channels rather than the barter system being practised at present, as it is reasoned that this would give a fillip to the trade between the two parts of Kashmir.
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