Although not mentioned in the six-page text of agreed minutes of the recent talks between the Commerce Secretaries of India and Pakistan, New Delhi may get to export 1,938 items through the Wagah-Attari land route from October. At present, only 110 items are allowed through the single gate on the border.
To achieve this, New Delhi has committed to invest up to Rs 150 crore to set up a new integrated checkpost over 100 acres on the Indian side of the border. “At present, road trade through the single gate happens for just six hours — 9 am to 3 pm. What we have committed is a second gate within the next six months, exclusively dedicated to trade,” Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar told The Indian Express.
Essentially, this is the fructification of an earlier agreement between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari when they met in New York in September 2008. But the 26/11 Mumbai attacks strained the ties betwen the two countries.
While on the face of it, the agreed minutes of the meeting between Khullar and his Pakistan counterpart Zafar Mehmood on April 27-28 do not suggest any remarkable movement forward, senior officials said the biggest “breakthrough” was New Delhi’s ability to convince Islamabad that the issue of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status be delinked with non-trade barriers (NTBs).
Pakistan has maintained that unless India stops imposing non-trade barriers on its exports, Islamabad would not give it MFN status. India granted Pakistan MFN status in 1996, but Pakistan, despite being a WTO member, has declined this to India.
“Finally, they agree that the agreements on application of SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary measures) and TBT (technical barriers to trade) are the right forum to address disputes relating to NTBs,” said an official.
India has, nevertheless, agreed to set up a working group that will meet before September to identify all sector-specific trade barriers, be it cement, textiles or food products.
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