India protests Pak failure to give all sops

NEW DELHI: India has registered a formal protest with the Saarc Secretariat against Pakistan for violating the “letter and spirit” of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (Safta) agreement by not extending to India the same tariff concessions it has offered to other members. It has requested that a Safta ministerial council meeting should be called urgently to take a call on the matter.

Under Safta, Pakistan has agreed to provide tariff concessions on 4,872 products to all members, but it wants to restrict India’s access to just the 773 items on the ‘positive’ list maintained for New Delhi.

In a letter to Saarc secretariat’s secretary general Chenkyab Dorji, commerce & industry minister Kamal Nath said that Pakistan’s decision was likely to have a serious impact on the implementation of the Safta agreement. “We request you to convene the Safta ministerial council meeting urgently for considering this matter,” he said.

The minister pointed out that Pakistan had ratified Safta without any reservations. Therefore, the Pakistan government’s import policy order internally notified in July 2005 restricting import of goods from India to 773 items on the positive list did not apply to Safta.

“I am sure you would agree that Safta has little operational meaning if Pakistan does not apply it to all the items except those tariff lines in the sensitive list to all member countries,” the letter said.

India wants Pakistan to maintain just a ‘negative’ list of items which will not be covered under Safta rather than persisting with the ‘positive’ list. All items other than those in the ‘negative’ list should get market access, India has been emphasising at meetings with Pakistan and other Saarc members.