The secretary-level meeting was expected to set the agenda for further cooperation and the next round of trade concessions between the members. Pakistan has also sought postponement of the Lahore trade fair to October-November 1997 instead of January 1997.
The commerce ministry is not happy with Pakistans lack of response. It had expected that at the last meeting on trade concessions held at Islamabad earlier this month, Pakistan would have some offer to make on permitting imports of more items from India.
This expectation was however belied. At present around 570 items are permitted for import from India.
The issue of Pakistan granting MFN status to India has been hanging in fire for a while now.
In January, when the meeting of the commerce ministers of the Saarc countries was held in the capital, officials had said that the key to the entire meeting would depend on Pakistans granting India the most favoured nation status.
However, Pakistan did not indicate that it was ready to grant MFN status to India at the meeting.
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India had then reiterated that the success of the second round of concessions depended crucially on Pakistan offering MFN status to India. However, by the time of the first meeting in March, Pakistan had not agreed to this.
In June, soon after the new government took charge, the Pakistan government had given indications to the Press regarding the possibility of granting the most favoured nation (MFN) status to India.
The commerce ministry had welcomed the move. However, the announcement was not followed up by any concrete action and secretary-level talks have not taken place.
Further, the commerce ministry has not yet received any official intimation in this regard.