India asks Pakistan to come out with negative list of imports

New Delhi, May 18 (PTI) In order to improve bilateral
trade, India Tuesday asked Pakistan to clearly spell out the
items it would not like to import from Indian traders.
"Most important factors to my mind to improve the
economic cooperations between our two nations ... replacement
of existing positive list by negative list of goods beyond
which it (Pakistan) would permit imports from India," India's
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at the Indo-Pak
business meet organised by CII, the 'Times of India' and Jang
Group.
At present, Pakistan has a positive list of items of
imports from India. This creates a major problem for bilateral
trade since it becomes difficult to identify items in which
Indian exports are not allowed.
The Pakistan's positive list of imported items from India
has been substantially expanded to 1,934 items in September
2009 from 773 in July 2006.
Mukherjee said Pakistan has not implemented the
provisions of maintaining the negative list despite
ratification of South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA).
The Finance Minister also called for liberalisation of
the trade regime in the two countries, improvement in
communication and free movement of goods between the two
countries for expansion of bilateral trade. PTI