India hopes Pak will grant MFN status by June-July

NEW DELHI: The government today expressed hope that Pakistan will move ahead with the proposal of granting MNF status to India after the elections in the neighbouring country.

"Hopefully by June-July, a new government will assume office in Pakistan and I am sure that the first priority of the new government would be perhaps giving the ( MFN) status," Commerce Secretary S R Rao said here at a ICRIER function.

Elections in Pakistan are expected to take place in May this year.

The neighbouring country has missed the deadline of December 31, 2012 for granting the status to India.

In March last year, Pakistan had moved to a negative list regime for trade from the positive list regime.

This has opened Pakistani market for about 7,000 Indian goods against about 2,000 earlier. It has said that it would remove the negative list, which contains 1,209 items, by December 2012 -- technically which would mean grant of MFN status to India.

Allaying concerns of Pakistan businessmen that after this status Indian products would swamp Pakistani market, Rao said that enough safeguards are available in the SAARC agreement to protect domestic industries.

"In the SAARC agreement, we have safeguard clause which is over and above the safeguards present under the WTO regime. ..an authority can do due diligence if any injury is happening to its domestic players and it can protect the industry by raising the tariffs," he said.

On visa issue, he said both the sides have signed the agreement for visa liberalisation.

"Business visas are going to be normalised as the agreement has been signed and only notifications are awaited from both the sides," he said adding "work visas would also come" as the both the sides have now permitted FDI.

The bilateral trade between the countries stood at about USD 2 billion 2011-12.