KARACHI: “Export duties will not be reduced. We do not foresee any difficulties in marketing our products,” Commerce Minister Fazlur Rahman declared while announcing Pakistan’s new trade policy for the period ending June, 1950… . The new policy, the prime minister said, was based on strictly commercial principles of marketing and sale of exportable surplus at the “highest possible level” and importing “sufficiency” of essential goods — capital and consumer — from the cheapest market.

He told the nation that he would not ask them for any … “harsh sacrifices”. The allocations for commercial imports would be maintained at the 1948-49 level, and with the favourable turn of soft currency prices there should be an increase in the volume of imported goods.

The Government, however, he said, would not allow drain of Pakistan’s earnings on luxury goods which peoples could do without. “It will cause me no sorrow to see such goods diminish in our markets to be replaced by solid and valuable commodities.” The Minister charged that India had brought the inter-dominion trade to a stand-still by refusing to accept the new rates of exchange.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2024