Pakistan government allows imports from India

Islamabad, Jul 19: Pakistan government has announced the trade policy for the fiscal year 2008-09 setting an export target of 22.10 billion dollars and allowing imports from its eastern neighbour, India. The policy, announced by Commerce Minister Ahmad Mukhtar at a press conference Friday, July 18, offered a number of incentives for traditional products.

It envisaged establishment of 11 new industrial clusters and reactivation of the Federal Export Promotion Board. Import of more than 136 new items from India has been allowed. Of these, 72 tariff lines were added to the importable list for raw materials, chemicals and industrial inputs, nine tariff lines for pharmaceutical products and vaccines, two for fruit and vegetables, 19 for fertiliser, 32 for machinery and parts and two for POL and diesel.

With the inclusion of these items, the total list of tradable products with India has been increased to 1,938 tariff lines from earlier 1,837.

The global import of these 136 tariff lines stood at 2.8 billion dollars, of which 2.2 billion dollars was spent only on import of POL and diesel.

This means the government has diverted this import value of 2.8 billion dollars to India, which will increase its exports to over three billion dollars from the current level of one billion dollars and become the second largest trading partner of Pakistan after China.

After this increase in imports from India, the grant of MFN status to India would become meaningless, but the Minister linked it with the removal of non-tariff measures by India.

UNI