Peer pressure might delay Anand Sharma's Pakistan visit

Home, foreign ministries want 'proper outcome' from trip

Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma might delay his visit to Pakistan, with the ministry of external affairs (MEA) and ministry of home affairs (MHA) insisting on a “proper outcome” from the trip, in terms of a significant boost to the bilateral trading arrangement.

The original plan was that Sharma would go during the ‘India Show’ scheduled at Lahore on February 14-16, to be followed by a meeting of the Pakistan India Joint Business Forum on February 16-18.

However, Sharma appears to have decided to postpone going by a week. This is because the government now wants Pakistan to issue a “commitment” on the deliverables agreed by both sides for normalising trade relations. Besides, Sharma wants to avoid a hullabaloo in Parliament over his visit, a senior commerce department official told Business Standard.

Apparently, India has asked Pakistan to give a clear road map on mainly three issues. First, allowing more goods through the Attari-Wagah border with immediate effect.  New Delhi has written a letter to Islamabad for “an urgent response”. This was followed by a phone call between both the commerce secretaries, Rajeev Kher and Qasim M Niaz. Currently, only 137 items are traded through the Attari-Wagah land customs stations, compared to a little over 7,000 which India exports to Pakistan. This is one demand both the MEA and MHA have been insisting on.

There are strong indications that this might happen soon, said another official. Second, the government has asked Islamabad to respond on phasing out the ‘negative list’, which technically means giving India the ‘Most Favoured Nation’ status, also termed non-discriminatory market access.

Currently, Pakistan maintains a list 1,209 items which India cannot export there. Some of these are of India’s export interest such as textiles, agricultural products and equipment, pharmaceutical and automobiles. MEA has now asked the commerce ministry to “push for” the demands, since it believes Sharma’s earlier visit to Pakistan “did not yield much,” another top official said, asking not to be identified.

Besides, India has also asked Pakistan to reduce its ‘sensitive list’ to 100 items from 840 at present, over a span of five years under the South Asian Free Trade Agreement. Reciprocally, India will reduce its to 100 from 614, over a year.