ISLAMABAD - Pakistan and India are likely to make progress in opening of bank branches in both the countries in order to promote bilateral trade in the upcoming trade talks scheduled to be held in the last week of September, it has been reliably learnt. After a gap of three years, the commerce ministers of Pakistan and India would start trade talks in the ongoing month, most likely on September 26 or 27. Commerce Minister Makhdoom Amin Faheem would lead the Pakistani delegation while Indian Commerce Minister Anand Sharma would head his side. Sources told TheNation that apart from opening bank branches, the two rival countries are expected to hold talks on promoting bilateral trade and removal of non-tariff barriers during the last week of September in New Delhi. Indians are expecting that discussion could lead Islamabad giving New Delhi the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status. It might be mentioned here that in secretaries-level talks, Pakistan had indicated granting MFN status to India provided it removed the non-tariff barriers for Pakistani goods. In April this year, commerce secretaries of both the countries had expressed their willingness to proceed further on issues like removing non-tariff barriers (NTBs), and Pakistan extending the Most Favoured Nation status to India. Meanwhile, Islamabad and New Delhi would negotiate for narrowing down the 'negative list for trade between two countries. Meanwhile, the sources also said that Pakistan would urge India to end its objection to the European Union (EU) preferential trade package offered to Pakistan in the wake of last years devastating floods. Secretary Commerce Zafar Mahmood told media a few days back that both the countries were making progress as per schedule agreed during the secretaries-level talks. No deadline has been missed and they are on target, he added. Both the countries had decided at the secretaries-level talks that many of the tariff and non-tariff barriers would be resolved before the meeting of the trade ministers in September to take some steps for actually liberalising the bilateral trade between the two neighbouring states.