South Asian countries have been asked to boost mutual trade and investment by removing non-tariff barriers, easing travel and visa restrictions, making more investment agreements and reviewing sensitive list.
These recommendations were forwarded at the concluding session of the two-day roundtable on South Asian Free Trade Agreement (Safta) on Wednesday organised by the Saarc Chamber of Commerce and Industry here.
The roundtable ended with a set of recommendations gathered from the discussions and presentations made by the participants, which will be presented to the Saarc Secretariat for implementation.
The major recommendations are: removal of non-tariff barriers hindering the regional trade; easing travel and visa restrictions for the member countries; inclusion of investment agreements and services sector in the Safta; reviewing the sensitive list; mutual recognition of certification and harmonisation of standards for greater trade facilitation among the regional countries; consulting the Saarc Chamber as representative of Saarc trade bodies; adopting negotiation process in trade and business activities and helping less-developed countries to enhance and diversify the productions besides asking Pakistan and India to make concessions to each other in opening up their trade regime.
In his keynote address, Satyabrata Pal, the High Commissioner of India to Pakistan, criticised Pakistan''s stand on Safta saying that Pakistan''s bid to exclude India from the Safta provisions could question its credibility among the member states. There were no trade-related Pakistan-specific barriers in India, he claimed.
He said that a joint study group under Commerce ministries of the two countries had been established, which had already framed recommendations for enhancing Pakistan''s exports to India.
He said that Pakistan and India were two major economies in the Saarc region and one had to simply accept that unless Pakistan overcame its hesitations about entering into normal relations with India, including trade and investment, Safta would be hamstrung.
"Trade cannot take place unless people, goods and services can move easily between countries, if they can, you have both commerce and closer integration," he observed.
The High Commissioner said that both the countries did not belittle the importance of putting the problem of Kashmir behind them, not least because it had been the cause of conflict. Pakistan and India are addressing it seriously through a more sustained dialogue that we have ever managed before, we would continue to work on it, but we hope that everything else will not be held hostage to it, he remarked.
"There is a great interest here in pressing ahead with the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, which has been described by Pakistani leaders as a "peace pipeline".
"This project is predicated on trust and mutuality of benefits, the same values that underpin Safta and it will entail trade and transit across Pakistan that will help India. If this massive, high-profile project, which too will help integrate the larger region, is politically acceptable in Pakistan, why should normal trade and transit, bilaterally and in Safta, not be", he questioned.
Pal said that history showed that trade helped to pave the way as the Europeans had proved it, as also proved by India''s relations with China. The World Bank and others believed that trade between India and Pakistan would anchor the political rapprochement and the peace process, he recalled.
Arshad A Zuberi, Deputy Chief Executive of Business Recorder Group, said that co-operation in the financial sector services in a harmonised way became all the more relevant for the Saarc region not only to arrest volatile capital flows from the less liberalised economy leading possibly to domestic monetary and financial crisis but also ever-increasing volumes of trade.
"Growth pattern of trade and trade-related transactions suggest that there is urgent need to strengthen co-operation in the banking sector to dispense with the increasing trade transactions in coming years, which if not materialised could harm growth of trade among Saarc members," he observed.
He pointed out that the political will to explore potential in regional co-operation in the financial sector and the existing and future avenues for building regional partnership exists but it never materialised.
Zuberi said that monetary co-operation in Saarc could be another area to forge the existing co-operation as the proposed South Asian Economic Union was seen as a logical culmination of the Safta and a South Asian Customs Union, which are envisaged over a specific timeframe.
"Saarc has definitely articulated a vision of regional solidarity, allowed political leadership to meet collectively over periodic intervals and brought regional integration at the core of deliberations within a short span of time," he concluded.