While Pakistan is going through a time of uncertainty, a top diplomat on Friday indicated that economic relations with India is set to improve soon.
He added that the two countries are ready to go ahead with the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project.
“The Pakistan petroleum minister will visit India soon and we are making remarkable progress on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project. In case of the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline in which we were keen on, India decided not to participate,” said Shahid Malik, Pakistan High Commissioner in India, while speaking on a Merchant Chamber of Commerce meet here on Friday.
While denying political instability in that country, he said that the Indian Commerce Minister Anand Sharma will visit Islamabad soon: “Pakistan is going to shift its trading arrangements with India from a bigger ‘positive list’ to a small ‘negative list’ under trade liberalisation arrangements. It will be finalised by February 2012.”
Under the present positive list, Pakistan allows import of about 1,933 items from India. India allows import of all but a few Pakistani items which are in the Indian negative list.
Both the countries are also talking about a liberal visa policy. “The visa policy has been more or less finalised. Under which, businessmen will get a multiple entry visa for one year,” he added.
