Land routes for India: Kissan Ittehad to stage sit-in at Wagha on March 31

All Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (APKI) on Wednesday announced that it will stage a sit-in at Wagha border on March 31st, 2014 to exert pressure on the Nawaz government not to open land routes for trade with India. This was stated by Khalid Mehmood Khokhar, central president APKI at a press conference held at Karachi Press Club (KPC), here.
Khalid said the decision was aimed at preventing Pakistani government from opening land routes for trade with India as it would push the entire nation towards dependence on their arch rival.
Khokhar said farmers would continue sit-in till the government withdraws its decision. Moreover, he said the government had completely ignored agriculture sector, which contributed 21 percent of the GDP and provided employment to 25 percent of the country's total population.
Khokhar said the authority's keenness to grant Non-Discriminatory Market Access (NDMA) status to India was illogical. He added that Pakistan had failed to penetrate into the Indian market despite having Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status from India. This trade imbalance between both the countries is an eye-opener for those, who are in favour of granting MFN or NDMA to India, he said.
Furthermore, he said that trade volume between Pakistan and India stood at around $2.4 billion, which was heavily in India's favour with $1.84 billion exports to Pakistan a year ago.
He said agriculture products constitute majority of Indian exports however due to high tariff barriers and complex scheme for non-tariff barriers Pakistan could export cement, gypsum and citrus.
Khokhar said in the presence of India's high tariff barriers, complex non-tariff barriers and number of subsidies (both direct and indirect), Pakistan could not afford to open Wagha border or any other land route for the exports of agriculture items to India.
Meanwhile, Hasan Ali, President, Sindh Chamber of Agriculture said India's MFN tariffs for agriculture were five times higher than Pakistan - 45 percent versus 9 percent, hence Pakistan had a little edge viz its exports to India.
He said the Indian government was facilitating its farmers through different incentives including free electricity, cheap urea, water for irrigation, seeds in low prices, cheap transportation, subsidised pesticides and agricultural machinery such as tractors. On the other hand, Pakistani farmers are paying heavy price for electricity, urea, seeds and other inputs, he added.