New policy: Govt may regulate India trade via ‘negative list’

Official trade is currently controlled through a positive list.

ISLAMABAD:

The government is considering regulating the trade with India through a ‘negative list’, instead of a ‘positive list’, sources told The Express Tribune on Saturday.

Officials said that the changes in trade procedures would not be made during the current financial year.

According to them, the government has decided to include 15 to 20 more items in the positive list.

Sources said that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has ordered authorities to thoroughly evaluate the performance of the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) and commercial counsellors, who failed to deliver despite staying abroad for years at taxpayers’ expense.

The prime minister is learnt to have asked Planning Commission to carry out a thorough scrutiny, said sources who attended a meeting convened to approve the trade policy for fiscal year 2011-12.

Prime Minister Gilani is also learnt to have approved the new trade policy that would now be tabled in the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet meeting for final approval, says a terse commerce ministry statement.

The government constituted another committee to readjust export target for the new trade policy, after the target proposed by the commerce ministry was disputed by the finance minister. An official said that the cotton crop target had been revised down to 14.5 million bales after the recent floods against earlier estimates of 16 million bales.



Published in The Express Tribune, September 11^th, 2011.