India, Pakistan agree to revitalise ongoing talks on power trade.

NEW DELHI: Emphasising on the need to further enhance bilateral commerce through land route, India and Pakistan today agreed to revitalise the ongoing talks on electricity trade between the countries.

The issues came up for discussion during the meeting of Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma and Shahbaz Sharif, Chief Minister of Punjab Province of Pakistan who was accompanied by Minister of State for Commerce Khurram Dastgir Khan.

"Both sides agreed that ongoing technical talks for electricity transmission line and bilateral trade of power/gas need to be revitalised, so that there is tangible progress for actual flow of gas and power between both the countries," an official statement said.

Both the sides expressed hope that continuous engagements between business communities would pave the way for deeper bilateral economic cooperation, including opening of bank branches on a reciprocal basis which would help facilitate bilateral trade.

Sharma conveyed that India stands committed to the roadmap for bilateral trade normalisation as was worked out in September 2012 between Commerce Secretaries of both the sides.

As per the roadmap, Pakistan would remove restrictions on trade through land route (Attari-Wagah Integrated Check Post). It would also eliminate its balance 1,209 products from its current negative list of items importable from India.

"On the basis of these agreed steps to be taken, Sharma reiterated that India would give enhanced preferential trade access to Pakistan by bringing down its South Asia Free Trade Agreement sensitive list from 614 tariff lines to 100 tariff lines," it said.

It said that Pakistan would also reduce SAFTA sensitive list for India to 100 tariff lines in a phased manner over five years.

It was also agreed that with the growing volume of trade by the land route, the working hours at Attari-Wagah can be further enhanced and even contemplated for 24/7 operating conditions.

Further, Sharma offered that to debottleneck congestion at Attari-Wagah, containerised traffic could be accepted with appropriate security arrangements at customs bonded warehouses at Amritsar and Lahore.

"This suggestion was welcomed by both Sharif and Dastgir," it added. The bilateral trade between the countries stood at about USD 3 billion.

Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com