NEW DELHI : India and Pakistan need to work on areas such as complete liberalisation of trade process, harmonisation of regional standards and enhanced sectoral cooperation to stabilise trade relations between the nations, a top commerce ministry official said. “The stability (in trade between India and Pakistan) can only come when there is a concept of value chain, when there is a sectoral cooperation, when there is a fully liberalised trade, when regional standards are harmonised and improvement in infrastructure for trade facilitation,” Special Secretary in the Commerce Ministry Rajeev Kher said. He was speaking at the ICRIER’s function on ‘Normalising India-Pakistan Trade’ here.
In his “personal view”, he said these are the five-six areas where both the countries have to work hard to bring stability in their trade relationship. Kher also said that both sides should stick to the roadmap of September 2012. As per the roadmap, Pakistan would remove restrictions on trade through land route and cut the number of items on the sensitive list in a phased manner.