Window dressing on trade

Unfortunately, the commerce minister make absolutely no mention of granting MFN status to India in his speech.

Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir delivered a very detailed briefing to the National Assembly recently, where he described the government’s efforts to open up more trade corridors with India, including sea routes, as well as land crossings in Sindh and southern Punjab. He also addressed what he identified as the government’s weaknesses in negotiating trade agreements in years past. All of this is useful information that we are glad the minister decided to share with the legislature. But why did he make absolutely no mention of granting Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India? Or, Non-Discriminatory Market Access on a Reciprocal Basis (NDMARB), as we are now supposed to call it?

This is an ancient bureaucratic technique, as old as government itself. Whenever one lacks a substantive announcement, bury the audience in technical detail. Perhaps, this may have worked in times past, when the state had more control over news sources, but surely the minister cannot expect every journalist in Pakistan to forget the rumblings coming out of Islamabad that the NDMARB was supposed to have been granted to India two weeks ago. And these were not the usual rumours that one hears either. No, the date was rather specific; March 21, everyone was saying. When everyone’s sources agree on the date, that is not a wild conjecture: that is the government softening up the ground with an unofficial leak.

So what happened? Which lobby, or collection of lobbies, managed to call the cabinet in time to have the measure blocked? That is the real question the minister should have been answering in front of the Parliament and one we wish the opposition had the wisdom to ask. The public has a right to know.

The ideas the commerce minister discussed last week were certainly moves in the right direction: the volume of trade between India and Pakistan is expected to grow dramatically and the logistical details do need to be sorted out. But those details are just that: details that are not controversial and can be sorted out without much need to make a fuss. The heart of the matter is the NDMARB. On that, unfortunately, all the nation got was silence.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 2^nd, 2014.

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