India to address Pak's concerns on trade

New Delhi: With the hope that Pakistan fulfils its commitment with regard to SAFTA, India on Sunday expressed readiness to consider some "unilateral" steps to address certain concerns of Islamabad to see operationalisation of the regional trading agreement.

Ahead of the SAARC Summit, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee also stressed the criticality of inter-connectivity among all the eight member countries of SAARC in terms of road access and energy to raise the volume of trade to the real potential of the region.

The SAARC Summit will take place here on April 3 and 4.

"On SAFTA, there is a problem with Pakistan," he told PTI in an interview in New Delhi.

SAFTA, which envisages free trade among SAARC countries, was ratified on January 1 last year and came into effect on July 1.

Despite ratifying it, Pakistan has, however, refused to implement it.

Mukherjee said Pakistan has been insisting that its trade with India is "not free" and is based on the 'positive list' of goods. Islamabad has expressed readiness to improve it and expanded the list to 1078 items, by adding 300 items.

"Let us examine the number of items they have given. Or whether we can do something unilaterally, irrespective of what they do," Mukherjee said.

After failing to resolve the concerns raised by Pakistan on SAFTA at the SAARC Foreign Ministers' conference in Dhaka last August, the matter was referred to the Council of Commerce Ministers.

"Pakistan has been raising certain non-tariff issues, which we will try to address," Mukherjee said, adding, "We will also try to see that ultimately they comply with their commitments which they pledged by ratifying SAFTA.

"But the problem is yet to be resolved," he said, hoping it will be sorted out soon.

Non-compliance by Pakistan of its commitments could lead to problems in other areas, the External Affairs Minister said.

He said India has already provided "deep cuts" in tariffs to a number of countries and was ready to extend it to Pakistan.

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Pointing out that South Asia is the fastest growing region, he underlined that constraints like non-tariff barriers have to be removed to allow the trade to grow.

"Thanks to their policies of liberalisation of economy, all the SAARC countries have had good GDP growth over the last one-and-a-half decades despite many problems and political uncertainties," Mukherjee remarked.

"But this is not reflected in the intra-regional trade," he said, noting that the volume of trade among the SAARC countries was merely five per cent.

The upcoming 14th Summit will seek to sort out all such issues. The Summit assumes added significance as Afghanistan will be participating for the first time as its eighth member while China, Japan, South Korea, US and European Union will attend as Observers.

Joining of Afghanistan, China, Japan and South Korea in the SAARC process provides an opportunity to integrate South Asia with Central Asia as well as East Asia, Mukherjee said.

Inter-connectivity, facilitation of land trade and easing of travel within the region will be the main themes of the coming Summit.

Referring to energy, he said some countries of the region were deficient and some surplus in this vital sector.

There is a proposal to set up an energy grid that will enable energy-deficient countries to benefit from those having surplus.

Mukherjee favoured free movement within the region of professionals, particularly those from IT sector, service industry and businessmen.

"Visa restrictions have to be removed," he said, adding "all these issues, we will try to resolve at various levels, including at the Summit level."

A proposal for establishing a mechanism of tele-medicine within the region is also expected to be approved at the coming Summit.

The proposal involves linking of two hospitals of each member country for providing super-speciality treatment.

"The objective of the upcoming Summit will be to see that the spirit of SAARC cooperation is translated at different layers," he said.