EU concessions: the issue lingers on

EU trade concessions to Pakistan are already six months too late. And from the looks of it, by the time the concessions materialise, the window of opportunity, during which the concessions can be capitalised upon, will be further squeezed.
The big question, however, is whether the concessions are going to materialize, at all. "Pakistani representatives at the WTO did not handle the deal intelligibly; it was a diplomatic failure on their account," Ijaz Khokar, Chairman of Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PRGMEA) told BR Research.
Khokar, who has accompanied a number of trade missions abroad, says that had effective diplomacy been at play, India wouldn have gained the support of Peru and other South American countries in its objection against the concessions at the WTO.
"These countries don even export as many items (from the concessionary list) to the EU; it made no sense for them to rally with India," said Khokar.
Unlike the PRGMEA boss, however, who doesn expect the concessions to follow through, Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, Advisor to PM on textile, is still hopeful that the November WTO moot would yield favourable results.
"Pakistani businessmen have held discussions with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, whose secretary general, Rajiv Kumar, has promised to take up the matter with Indian government officials," said Baig.
Well, so has David Cameron, the UK premier, along with Sweden, Norway, and Germany for the past many months. But little has been achieved and the root of the problem; India, continues to cast spell over the concessions, when in fact it doesn stand to lose anything from them.
PRGMEA member Ibrahim Mahmood recently undertook a study to determine the extent of the impact of this concession on exports of Bangladesh and India. He asserts that Indias problem is more political than economical.
"They (India and Bangladesh) do not even compete with Pakistan in the trade lines with EU; the products Pakistan exports to the EU do not clash with those sold by India or Bangladesh," he said.
Two possible solutions to the issue seem to surface at this point. One, as Baig suggests, is that the EU can be urged to pass an "interim" concession till such time that Indias objection is resolved at the WTO. "Such precedents exist, and this is one of options we are exploring," Baig informed BR Research.
The other option could be to throw the Indians an MFN bone. The government of Pakistan has already expressed its intent to grant MFN status to India, and perhaps it would not be too much to ask of our eastern neighbors to reciprocate the goodwill gesture and withdraw objections from the WTO.