EU concessions to Pakistan: Brazil to review earlier decision

A ministerial meeting of Brazil government has been underway to review its concerns, which were raised at World Trade Organisation against EU concessions to Pakistan, it is learnt. Prior to the meeting in Brazil, Foreign Minister Hina Rabani Khar also held a meeting with the Ambassador of Brazil Alfredo Leoni on Thursday.
The Ambassador assured the minister that the Brazilian government would show flexibility in its earlier stand. Later, the ambassador informed his government about the point of Pakistani side. In an exclusive talk with Business Recorder, the Brazilian Ambassador said he had recommended to his government very strongly for relaxation on the two-point stand after his meeting with Foreign Minister Hina.
Brazil has taken stand on the principled ground that the World Trade Organisation is not a political forum to solve the disputes of political nature. It is a world forum to deal with commercial and business matters. The Ambassador said that the Brazilian government feels that this kind of favour is motivated by political will of EU and has no precedent in the past.
He said that like other countries the shoe and leather producers are showing their concern, as they think such waiver may impact the export of shoe and leather of Brazil. Other point was that Brazil had the understanding that the period of these concessions would be specified, no longer than December 2013.
He said he has strong hope that the government of Brazil would show flexibility, taking into account humanitarian aspect. "The Brazilian government has called a ministerial meeting, besides initiating negotiation with businessmen of countries to reach any conclusion," he said.
Sources in Foreign Office said that the scheduled visit of Hina to Brazil and Argentina in November has been cancelled. The visit was part of diplomacy running by federal government to convince the countries by addressing their apprehensions on EU concessions, sources said. In October, the EU had approached the WTO to seek waiver on trade concessions to Pakistan on 75 products amounting to 900 million euros for a two-year period to help the Pakistan recover from floods damage. The strong resistance put by India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Brazil and other countries at the WTO council meeting resulted in delay on the implementation from January 1 to April 1, 2011.
Now India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have in writing informed the WTO that they have no objection if the concession would be granted to Pakistan. The EU had brought to the notice of WTO that the selected products were included after paying great attention to limit the potential negative impact on other members and passing maximum positive impact on flood-hit Pakistan. The selected product lines amounted to Euro 900 million in import value, accounting for about 27 percent of the 27 member blocks annual Euro 3 billion imports from Pakistan. However, under EU offer, $1 billion worth home-textile exports to EU were excluded from the concessions, while mostly duty free import of textile raw material was allowed.