Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri said that an agreement on the Saarc sponsored South Asian Free Trade Association (Safta) was now in sight as the most irking issues had been resolved. Talking to a group of media persons, that surrounded him after he saw off the Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Countries, Ekmeledddin Ihsanoglu at the Foreign Ministry here on Wednesday, he indicated that he had seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

Answering to queries raised by journalists, Kasuri said that since January last year the Saarc had six meetings of the experts with the result that they were approaching an agreement.

The South Asian Free Trade Agreement, the first experiment in boosting bilateral and regional trade, is to take effect from coming January 1 next year.

The experts were nearing an agreement on the list of "sensitive goods" that would be outside the orbit of the Safta commerce. They are also nearing a compromise on the procedures to determine the origins of tradable commodities.

Issues relating to compensation for the loss of tariffs and duties that the low-developed countries of the Association will suffer, according to the Foreign Minister, have also been resolved.

The report on the progress of the Agreement was to be reviewed by the Standing Committee of the Foreign secretaries and presented to the Council of Foreign Ministers at the Dhaka Summit that had been postponed because of the developments in Nepal.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2005