20000223

Pakistan hopes to

boost trade

with Asean Countries

MUZAFFAR QURESHI

KARACHI: Mirza Qamar Baig, Secretary, Ministry of Commerce, has expressed the hope that the declining trend in Pakistan's Asean Trade, which set in last year after a very promising start at 20 percent increase, would be arrested and trade volume would increase at a fast pace in the coming years.

Reading a paper on Pakistan's trade policy at the Pak-Asean Trade Facilitation Workshop on Tuesday, he said that strong complementaries that "exist between our economies" should help in that direction. "There is very substantial demand in Pakistan for Asean goods, like rubber, palm oil, tea, spices, chemicals, betel-nuts and minerals. Similarly, Pakistan can offer surplus sugar, rice, cotton, yarn, fabrics, fresh and dry fruits, surgical instruments and sports goods and computer software", Baig said.

Presenting highlights of Pakistan's trade policy, he said that Pakistan had been following a policy of liberalisation, both in trade and industry. Long before the WTO system was put in place and made effective from January 1995, Pakistan undertook import liberalisation year after year notwithstanding the difficult balance of payments position against Pakistan, he added.

The commerce secretary said that Pakistan's trade policy "allows entry of a large number of freely importable items" and there was only a short Negative List of imports.

On the tariff side, Pakistan had gone ahead of its tariff schedule filed with the WTO and reduced the tariff from 65 percent in 1995 to 45 percent in 1998, and to 35 percent last year. "Actually, cascading lower tariffs at 25 percent, 15 percent and 10 percent are applicable on imports of machinery, raw materials and intermediate goods", he said.

Baig said that certain other countries in the region have far more restricted import regimes and far higher import tariffs. Pakistan has so far avoided anti-dumping duties and countervailing measures that are permissible under the WTO agreements. "However, if we feel that any segment of our industrial sector is hurt by very cheap imports at dumping prices we will need to resort to permissible protective devices", he added.

He said: "For the export industries on which we are banking for rectification of our trade imbalance with the world as a whole, of the order of 2.5 billion dollars, against exports targeted at 9 billion dollars in the current year, we allowed duty-free and licence-free import of raw materials, intermediates and machines that are not manufactured locally. This is achieved through a system of No-Duty-No-Drawback and establishment of Customs manufacturing bonds".

SECOND SESSION

At the second working session of the workshop, representatives of six Asean countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Laos and Cambodia, presented trade policies of their respective countries to apprise Pakistani businessmen rules of business prevailing in their respective countries.

After presentation of trade policy of every member country businessmen were allowed to ask questions about rules in any particular trade.

Before concluding the workshop is to identify areas of mutual cooperation between Pakistan and Asean to be pursued at government level. It was also supposed to fix date and place for the next trade facilitation workshop.