ISLAMABAD, July 28: Most of the speakers at a seminar on Monday advocated enhanced trade with India, but stressed that India should also reciprocate in the same manner.

Speaking at a seminar on “Trade Policy 2008-09” organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, they said Pakistan-India composite dialogue would be meaningless if focussed on trade and set aside outstanding disputes between the two countries.

Dr Safdar Sohail of Foreign Trade Institute of Pakistan (FTIP), Zubair Ahmed Malik of Saarc Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Islamabad, journalist Mubarak Zeb and Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri of Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) analysed different aspects of the trade policy.

The speakers stressed the need for implementation and evaluation mechanism to transform policy decisions into concrete actions. They lamented the slow implementation ratio of trade policy in the past previous years’ when more than 70 per cent major decisions remained unimplemented. Most of the speakers favored trade liberalization with India.

Zubair Ahmed Malik termed the new trade policy ‘continuation of old one’, which he considered a ‘positive step’. He questioned the prospects of the policy at the implementation stage as a tangible roadmap to implement these noble ideas and wishful goals was missing.

He appreciated idealistic export target but said that it would be hard to achieve, as the government would not be able to control the imports. Besides appreciating some of the other features of policy, he advocated liberalization of trade with India adding that we have huge informal trade with India and now it is in the interest of both countries to formalize this trade.

“We should not be shy of trade with India as if we are giving India access to 1.6 million people then India too is giving us access to I billion people” he argued.

He said that political differences between India and Pakistan had made hostage all the South Asian countries and if Pakistan was not interested in trade with India, it should not have singed Safta.

Mr Malik urged an early textile policy for the country, as the trade policy had totally ignored textile sector. There may be good policy decisions about energy but industry would not be able to deliver unless uninterrupted power supply to it was ensured.

Dr Abid Suleri called for strong domestic mechanism to reasonably address the import, export and domestic commerce. He urged that the policy formulation should have a clear roadmap based on the ground realities and addresses the conditions in which the policy would be implemented.

He sought more subsidies for the textile sector in the area of research and development, and a synergy in the forthcoming policies of the government such as agricultural trade policy and monetary policy by the SBP which would be crucial for the prospects of trade policy. He welcomed the decision of trade liberalization with India adding that theoretically it might be a unilateral decision but it is good for the demand-supply gap and also in the best spirit of SAFTA.

Dr Sohail highlighted the significance of different initiatives announced in the trade policy to boost the exports in traditional sectors such as rice, leather, pharmaceuticals and non-traditional items such as seafood, halaal food, gems & jewelry, minerals, furniture, horticulture, herbal medicines, handicrafts and auto sector.

Hoping that India would reciprocate, he said that a very cautious approach has been adopted while allowing import of machinery and spare parts or raw materials from India on the specific demands of industry. He, however, dispelled the impression that the addition of 136 items in the positive list with India would worsen overall trade deficit.

Mubarak Zeb termed the policy unique in many ways as it was first policy under a coalition democratic setup led by two major political parties of the country but unfortunately it failed to give any qualitative and substantive roadmap for the trade. “Trade policy has become an annual ritual especially when presented after the annual budget and the new policy will not bring any structural change as no concrete and achievable measure have been envisioned in the policy,” he noted.

He lamented that the analysis of last 6-7 years’ trade policies show that 60-70% major policy decisions remained unimplemented because of limited timeframe, inefficiency, lack of skill and resources. On liberalizing trade with India, he termed it a unilateral dramatic decision by the government and failure of our negotiating strategy as all the CBM process has become focused to increase trade with India but it has adopted a realistic approach and has been trading with Pakistan on comparative advantage basis.