Pakistan Opens Its Doors To More Indian Items

Faced with the growing import bill and a yawning trade deficit, Pakistan has further liberalised its trade policy towards India by allowing the import of a host of additional items, including raw cotton, cotton yarn, tyres, chillies and a number of industrial raw material.

The items allowed for import are not produced in Pakistan, Pakistani commerce minister Ishaq Dar told newsmen here yesterday.

Dar, who had announced the trade policy on Wednesday evening after it was approved by the federal cabinet, said that the main thrust of the policy was on boosting export, the growth target for which had been fixed at 15 per cent during 1997-98 (July-June).

As per the new policy, the number of items to be imported from India has been increased from the earlier 587 to 601 with the addition of 14 new items.

While justifying the governments decision to allow more items to be imported from India, the minister said, If we get a product for five dollars, why we pay seven or eight dollars for the same, and added that most of these products were not produced in Pakistan and had to be imported from the West.

Apart from that, Pakistan was also bound under the World Trade Organisation Regime (WTO) regime and also under the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (Sapta) and the forthcoming South Asian Free Trade Agreement (Safta) to further liberalise its import regime.

Dar expressed his confidence that the import of most of these items would lead to the reduction of price of the finished products in Pakistan. We have seen our interest before allowing the import of these items, he said.

Apart from allowing the import of raw material from India, the Pakistan government has also lifted ban on the import of chillies, paints, varnish, raw and wet blue hides and skins, nickel chromium batteries, battery carbon, cutting dyes for shoe uppers, carbon brushes, anti-snake bite venom serum, cold turmeric, tanning or dying extracts, dyes pigments and other colouring material, wood and light weight steel rail up to 20 kg per mt.

The commerce minister said that the policy has been aimed at taking Pakistans total export during 1997-98 to $9.57 billion against the total import of $11.90 billion.