Indian trade minister cancels visit

Scheduled visit to Pakistan cancelled over what he said was stalled progress on trade agreements.

Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma on Wednesday announced the cancellation of his scheduled visit to Pakistan over what he said was stalled progress on trade agreements, Indian media reported.

“I don’t want to land up there to find they have not moved forward on their commitments,” Sharma said, according to a report in The Hindu, which also said that Pakistan has failed to operationalise the bilateral trade pact that Trade Minister Khurram Dastagir Khan had jointly agreed on with Sharma in New Delhi in January.

Citing ‘delays on the Pakistani side’ as his reasons, Sharma cancelled his visit to Lahore and Islamabad that was scheduled for this week.

The proposals that were agreed between the two sides in Delhi are 24/7-trade of all goods through Wagah-Attari border, dismantling of the negative list of 1,209 items and bringing down the sensitive list of items to 100 under the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) over a period of five years.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th, 2014.