Amid fresh hiccups in efforts to normalise ties between the arch-rivals, India’s top envoy to Pakistan, T C Raghavan, accused Islamabad of dragging feet on trade liberalisation deal despite agreeing to the broader contours.
In January this year, the Indian government had formally written a letter to Pakistan offering a comprehensive trade deal but the Pakistani government has not yet given a formal response to the offer, said Raghavan, the Indian High Commissioner to Islamabad on Thursday.
Raghavan said that after the Indian initiative the ball was pending in Pakistan’s court. He said the letter carrying the details of incentives had been written after an understanding on numbers and nature of concessions reached during the visit of Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir to India. He said if Pakistan honours its commitments given in September 2012 agreement and January 2014 agreement, the objectives of bilateral trade normalisation can be easily achieved.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2014.
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Indian will be insane if they think that Pakistan will give India MFN. In Urdu MFN = Bhai Bhai.
@mansoor khan: Seems u gain so by doing business with china
The point to ponder is why an otherwise highly fuming and annoyed India is suddenly pushing for liberisation of trade. Its not a friendship but a backstabbing attempt since the trade goes heavily in favour of India and its the main beneficiary of any such move. Its a typical Indian tactic to create another export market for their domestic produce and industry. Pakistan has very little to gain from it as it will not be able to export much to India given the size of industry in India and against the advantage of economy of scale. So this is trade is a farce.
Any way let them sign some MOU with some Indian companies
Trading with Pakistan is just simply too much of a problem and carries with it the risk of a whole host of unwelcome exports being mixed in with legitimate exports. These unwelcome exports from Pakistan into India include narcotics, arms and ammunition, counterfeit Indian currency notes, funding of terrorists under the garb of trade payments and potential for the export of the polio virus not to mention terrorists via the human contact required for trade. It also carries with it threats to the liberty of Indian citizens owing to maliciously capricious behaviour of Pakistani authorities such as that seen in an incident in January 2014 where the arrest in India of a Pakistani truck driver whose truck was found to be carrying narcotics resulted in innocent some 27 plus Indian’s being detained for some three weeks.
Government of India should revoke January 2014 letter, revoke Pakistan’s MFN status, stop trading with Pakistan forthwith.
Terrorism and Trade and in that order.