Pak’s ‘short’ negative list to usher in MFN by Feb’ 12

In the second stage,even that ‘small’ negative list would be phased out and the timeline for this would be announced in February 2012,while notifying the negative list.

“It is expected that the phasing out will be completed before the end of 2012,” the joint statement said. The Pakistani commerce secretary said that the negative list would have a few hundred items.

Once the negative list is phased out,India will automatically move on to become the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) for Pakistan as per the WTO requirement. Currently,India can only export 1,946 items to Pakistan from the 8,000 tariff lines being traded. Currently,the trade between India and Pakistan stands at $2.6 billion.

Further,the neighbouring countries agreed to enhance the preferential trade arrangement under the SAFTA process. Under preferential trade agreement (PTA),both sides will slash duties on specified number of items in a phased manner. The joint statement also said that both India and Pakistan had reached an understanding to put in place reciprocal arrangements to liberalise visas for businessmen.

The two nations also agreed that a joint working group on trade through the Attari-Wagah land route would meet end-November in order to complete all infrastructure and make the route “fully operational” no later than end February 2012. On non-tariff barriers (NTBs),it was agreed that that Pakistan’s list of NTBs would be examined and the regulators and business persons would work towards finding solutions.

An understanding has been reached for possible grid connectivity between Amritsar and Lahore to trade up to 500MW of power and a joint working group on petroleum trade would meet before January 2012.

Central banks of both countries would discuss the opening of bank branches in either country, through a bilateral visit.