It's official now: No MFN between India, Pakistan

Both sides to trade on the basis of non-discriminatory market access

It is finally official. India and Pakistan will now trade on a "non-discriminatory-market-access" (NDMA) basis, not a most-favoured-nation (MFN) one. The two sides also decided to carry out trade through the Wagah-Attari border on all days of the week and allow containers carrying shipments from both sides.

A joint statement, issued after a two-hour meeting between Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma and his Pakistani counterpart Khurram Dastagir Khan here on Saturday, said, "Both ministers reaffirmed the commitment of their governments to expeditiously establish normal trading relations and, in this context, provide non-discriminatory market access on a reciprocal basis."

According to both ministers, changing the nomenclature from MFN, a term used under the norms of the World Trade Organization (WTO), will further help in achieving the goal of increasing trade and investment between the countries. "MFN is an acronym of the WTO. When nations engage, they engage bilaterally…This is not the first time a new terminology is used. That is what is there between the US and China, and so many other countries. Either you get trapped in literary meaning…But what we are seeking to do is to go beyond," Sharma said.

The Pakistani commerce minister said there were minorities on both sides that "do not want peace talks to continue" and this had prompted the idea of a change in the trading nomenclature.

In an unprecedented move, the two countries also agreed to conduct trading across the Wagah-Attari land customs stations on all seven days every week. "We have agreed we will open the Wagah-Attari border 24x7 and will also allow both the sides the movement of containers till the container terminals at Amritsar and Lahore," Sharma told reporters, adding all the steps announced on Saturday would be implemented before the end of next month. He said the commerce secretaries of both countries would start the process of implementing the measures and this would include meetings between the technical working groups of customs, railways, banking, standards organisations and energy groups.

On allowing more goods to be traded through the Attari-Wagah border, Sharma said this was under negotiations and a decision on the matter would be taken soon.

Pakistan commerce minister Khan said he had urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to expedite the process of creating a relaxed business visa regime for the benefit of businessmen on both sides.

Khan invited Sharma to visit Pakistan with a high-powered business delegation during the "Made in India" scheduled to be held in Lahore next month.

Both sides, however, avoided stating any numbers in terms of how much trade both had recorded. Last financial year, trade between the two neighbours stood at about $3 billion. The two countries had set a target of increasing this to $6 billion by 2014.