Pakistan is likely to host the 6th meeting of the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) Ministerial Council and SAFTA Committee of experts in the third week of February 2012 to discuss the issues relating to implementation of MFN status to India in the presence of trade defence laws in Pakistan.
According to the sources, the trade defence laws include; National Tariff Commission Act 1990, Anti-dumping Duties Ordinance 2000, Countervailing Duties Ordinance 2001, and Safeguard Measure Ordinance 2002. The issues on which stakeholders would also be taken on board in the meeting are included moving from positive to negative list and vice versa for normalisation of trade regulations in terms of tariff.
The sources disclosed that the Ministry of Commerce has sought inputs from all the stakeholders by 10th December 2011; both from public and private sectors to reach an agreement on redressal of grievances with India. For this purpose, the Ministry of Commerce has commenced a series of meetings with the stakeholders in Islamabad and Karachi to discuss the matters pertaining to different agreements including; Mutual Recognition Agreement, as a formal mechanism to address the issues of standards and conformity assessment, Agreement on Redressal of Grievances to institute a mechanism for redressing grievances arising from clearance of trade consignments at land, sea, and airports and Customs Co-operation Agreement to harmonise customs procedures, facilitation of trade consignments and exchange of trade data and information.
These meetings are follow-up of the 6th Round of talks on Commercial and Economic Co-operation that was held on November 14-15 at New Delhi between the Commerce Secretaries of India and Pakistan in which both sides were agreed to fully normalise the bilateral trading relationship and to give confidence to the traders in both the countries.
The trade barriers from the Indian side include visa and travel restrictions, technical standards and regulations, limited number of ports and inland customs posts for imports customs clearance and customs valuation, inter-provincial movements of goods state trading enterprises, excessive use of trade defence measures and import regulations while on the Pakistani side these are positive list instead of MFN and non-implementation of SAFTA obligations.
Prior to granting of MFN status to Pakistan by India in 1996, Pakistan's trade with India continued on the basis of positive list that was kept on extending few more items every year which is evident from 42 items in 1986, 249 in 1988, 571 in 1989 and 577 items in 1995.