The BMP Secretary General in a statement on Thursday said the current development is yet another desperate and ill thought act on India's part and hoped that Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Confederation of Indian Industry would be petitioning to the Indian government to review its decision.
Jawad on Thursday said Indian decision to revoke Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status for Pakistan would little effect the national economy as these trade privileges never benefited us. He said bilateral trade between the two neighbours remained largely in favour of India and despite being granted the MFN status in 1996, Pakistan was never essentially helped to avail the relevant opportunities.
Mentioning that MFN besides, lowest possible trade tariffs and least possible trade barriers also guarantees highest import quotas, he said these were never fulfilled and consequently Pakistan's exports to India stood at merely US$480 million. "This should also be no surprise to realize that the total volume of India-Pakistan trade increased marginally to US$2.41 billion in 2017-2018 as against US$2.27 billion in 2016-17," he added.
Ahmad Jawad reiterated that recent decision of India, taken under pretext of a reaction to recent incident in Indian occupied Kashmir, was reflective of its discomfort towards growing global participation in CPEC and different other investment projects initiated in Pakistan. "International acknowledgment of Pakistan's relevance and its failure to corner Pakistan in the international community has compelled India to dent Pakistan's interest in every possible manner," he said.
In particular context of MFN status, Jawad said that it was a treatment accorded to a trade partner to ensure non-discriminatory trade between two countries vis-à-vis other trade partners. The importance of MFN could be gauged from the fact that it is the first clause in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and under WTO rules, a member country cannot discriminate between its trade partners," he said adding that the unilateral decisions taken by India was against the international trade spirit. Once a special status is granted to a trade partner, it must be extended to all members of the WTO, but unfortunately this was never seen, he asserted.
"This is despite the fact that our private sector wanted to establish proper trade relations with India on equal footings which was never reciprocated by the other side," he added. Similarly, if the government may impose 200 percent customs duty on the Indian products in the reciprocation of the Government of India , then Indian exporters may be lose $1.93 billion US dollars market which could be big hit on Indian economy; he maintained.