India-Pakistan Chamber of Commerce & Industry (IPCCI), formed by the two apex bodies ie Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI), has formed a business to business (B2B) joint study group to look into the opportunities for enhancing bilateral trade between the two countries. This joint study group would be headed jointly by Yawar Ali from Pakistan and Saroj Kumar Poddar from India, and would submit its preliminary report to the governments of both countries by the end of July and a final and comprehensive report by the end of current year.
This was announced by FPCCI President Muhammad Saeed and FICCI President Onkar S Kanwar at a joint press conference here on Friday. Two study panels, one each from both sides having four members, were also constituted. From Pakistan, this study group would have Yawar Ali, Amin Hashwani, Azhar Saeed Butt and Khalid Amin (Secretary General FPCCI) as member secretary, while from Indian side, Saroj Kumar Poddar, Habil Fakhruddin Khorakiwala, Om Prakash Lohia and Amit Mitra (Secretary General, FICCI) have been selected.
Talking about the objectives of this study group, they said it would look for ways to remove hurdles in the way of trade and investment, opportunities in expansion of trade and investment, selection of sectors for mutual focus based on a win-win formula, benefits from trade and investment promotion to both countries.
This B2B joint study group has selected ten sectors to look into for promoting bilateral trade and co-operation. These sectors included agriculture & agro processing, services, petrochemicals, chemicals, biotech & pharma, infrastructure, textiles & garments, engineering (including auto parts, machinery, surgical goods etc), gems & jewellery (including marble, granite, Onyx etc), lifestyle (including fashion, cosmetics, sports goods), large scale industries and investment and technology transfer.
In services sector, this group has pointed out areas of health, education, information technology, banking, entertainment and tourism, while in infrastructure it would study roads, railways, ports, aviation and telecom segments.
Regarding investment and technology transfer, they said that a list of sectors would be worked out where investments could flow both ways within a win-win framework.
Yawar Ali said that in each identified sector, people from that specific group would be taken so that they could make recommendations with which bilateral trade could be enhanced without hurting each other's industries.
Replying to queries regarding political issues, the Indian delegation members said that they were on business mission. They said that governments of both sides were working on political issues and first time ever it seemed that direction and intentions were right. They said that they were looking into opportunities to enhance trade, which would be beneficial for common man of both the sides, too.
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