The European Commissioner for Development to Pakistan, Mr Andre Pilbags, has said that the European Union will go ahead and give access to Pakistani products to its markets, despite the Indian opposition. That the EU will defend itself before the World Trade Organisation for this trade concession is welcome to Pakistani exporters, but it is also welcome because the concession was made to help us overcome the losses we suffered as a result of last years monsoon floods, and was in addition to the EUs purely humanitarian aid. Even this was objected to by India, which took the matter to the WTO and tried that the EU should either extend it the same concessions, or cancel them to Pakistan. This agreement to extend the privilege to Pakistan was made in view of its services in the war on terror, even though the USA itself, the main protagonist of the war, has not given it any trade concessions. Pakistan has also unsuccessfully requested the US to sign the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with it. The EU concessions to Pakistan may have proved particularly galling to India, because it is seeking an FTA with it, but the European Parliament has recently passed a resolution telling it to resolve its issues with Pakistan, especially Kashmir. However, there is a fly in the Pakistani ointment, and one which has been produced by itself. Apart from the law and order situation, which has been worsened by the war on terror, and which is blamed for the lack of fresh investment in the country, there is both gas and electricity loadshedding, which is the reason why Pakistani industrial and commercial units find it not just difficult but impossible to fill the orders they might receive. If this loadshedding continues, the trade concessions will be of little avail. They were extended under the slogan, which the present government has made much of: trade, not aid. If the government really believed in this, it should have done something about the power shortage, which is proving, in no uncertain terms, that it will strangle industry, including exports. Instead of proving an engine for growth, and creating the much-needed jobs destroyed in the floods, the EU trade concessions will prove ironic if Pakistan does not sort out its power shortage. One of the measures of which the present government has been guilty is its failure to build, though being in office since 2008, any new power projects, apart from the Rental Power Plants, which were used more to make money than alleviate the shortage. Without the government making more efforts, the export drive will be stalled before it is started. The government will realise that agreements or suppot will mean precious little if it does not take decisions that create conditions under which exports can take place.