New policy: Govt may regulate India trade via ‘negative list’

[Devil Soul]

New policy: Govt may regulate India trade via ‘negative list’
By Shahbaz Rana
Published: September 11, 2011
ISLAMABAD:
The government is considering regulating the trade with India through a ‘negative list’, instead of a ‘positive list’, sources told The Express Tribune on Saturday.
Officials said that the changes in trade procedures would not be made during the current financial year.
According to them, the government has decided to include 15 to 20 more items in the positive list.
Sources said that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has ordered authorities to thoroughly evaluate the performance of the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) and commercial counsellors, who failed to deliver despite staying abroad for years at taxpayers’ expense.
The prime minister is learnt to have asked Planning Commission to carry out a thorough scrutiny, said sources who attended a meeting convened to approve the trade policy for fiscal year 2011-12.
Prime Minister Gilani is also learnt to have approved the new trade policy that would now be tabled in the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet meeting for final approval, says a terse commerce ministry statement.
The government constituted another committee to readjust export target for the new trade policy, after the target proposed by the commerce ministry was disputed by the finance minister. An official said that the cotton crop target had been revised down to 14.5 million bales after the recent floods against earlier estimates of 16 million bales.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 11th, 2011.

 

[muse]

The government is considering regulating the trade with India through a ‘negative list’, instead of a ‘positive list’,

What are these negative and positive lists - and why are they needed? to achieve what?? on behalf of whom??

 

[Night_Raven]

What are these negative and positive lists - and why are they needed? to achieve what?? on behalf of whom??

I think :

Negative lists = Items not allowed for trade
Positive lists = Items allowed for trade

It better to say "You cannot export/import XYZ" rather than saying "You can export/import ABC" , because the number of items in ABC list is much much larger than in the XYZ list ....

 

[RoYaL~GuJJaR]

Someone please explain what is this all about! what are these negative/positive lists

 

[nForce]

hmm In my opinion,making a negative list means the number of items not allowed for trade are going down,since it is easier to maintain a shorter list.Hence,making a negative list can be taken as a positive approach towards bilateral trade between India and Pakistan.

 

[muse]

Heck of way to start trade - begin with what you can't trade - I think it's designed to safeguard monopolies in Pakistan and reflects the structural economic and governance problems.

Pakistan's single most important effort has to be to get the economy going, to generate millions of jobs - it's difficult to see how one begins to accomplish this goal by focusing on what we can't do, rather than what we can.