MFN status to India: 'consultations with stakeholders to last till February'

Consultations with stakeholders on the issue of most favoured nation (MFN) status to India will be completed by February 2012, before placing the matter before the Cabinet for final decision.
"We are discussing reservations and proposals of stakeholders from industry and other sectors to finalise proposals in this regard. This process was scheduled to be completed in October this year but now we have extended it till February to give everybody a chance for input," said Federal Commerce Secretary Zafar Mahmood while talking to journalists here on Saturday.
Zafar dispelled the impression that the government was in haste to declare India as 'most favoured nation' (MFN). He said: "MFN status means that we would not adopt any discriminatory attitude against any member country of the international trade agreements. However, in case of India we are doing trade with it on positive list, which means that only these products could be imported from India, and not the rest. India has already allowed import of everything from Pakistan and if we wanted to normalise trade relations with India then we have to think over granting MFN status to India."
He said that everybody had been provided a fair chance to elaborate that why Pakistan should not liberalise trade with India, while domestic markets had been opened for the rest of the world. He pointed out that China was the export powerhouse of inexpensive products for the world. Pakistan had signed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with it and opened domestic markets for Chinese merchandise. He was of the view there should be no harm in liberalising trade with India. Regarding kinnow export, he said that Pakistani kinnow hopefully would re-enter the Indonesian market this year. Pakistan was exporting one-third of its total kinnow export to Indonesia before an FTA signed by Indonesia and China because of which kinnow from Pakistan became uncompetitive. He hoped that kinnow exports which registered 100 million dollars last year would register a growth of 25 to 30 percent this year.
About growth of horticulture exports, he said that Pakistani exporters had to market their strength. He said: "We have lot of exportable items but Pakistani companies have to invest in value chain and make joint ventures to enter the international market".
Earlier speaking at the concluding ceremony of six-day training course on 'Food safety management system ISO-22000:2005', arranged by the Pakistan Horticulture Development and Export Company (PHDEC) in collaboration with the Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), the Commerce Secretary stressed the need for making Pakistani products compliant to international standards to increase exports.
He said that consumers in other countries are much more conscious and want to be sure about safety before using any product. He said that Pakistan had cotton in 1947 and developed a value-added supply chain for it and exporting products of this sector. He said that: "Our exporters should learn what standards importing countries have for horticulture products". He gave example of mango and said that Japan, US and Chinese markets have different standards, "and our exporters have to be compliant to enter those markets".
He said non-tariff barriers (NTBs) are nothing else but these standards. The course was attended by 12 overseas and nine Pakistani participants. Concluding ceremony was also attended by APO Japan representative Dr M Saeed and PHDEC CEO Bashir Hussein.