Addressing a meeting organized by Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) at the Chamber's office, Federal Secretary for Ministry of Commerce, Tasneem Noorani stated that Pakistan will be qualified for the Generalized Specific Preference (GSP) status from January 2006.
The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) was designed to allow industrialized countries to grant non-reciprocal tariff reductions to developing countries. The underlying idea was to help the developing world industrialize.
Noorani explained with the GSP status, Pakistani textile industry will be eligible to access in the European Union (EU) markets. However, China is still out of this status whereas India has been approved for a little benefit of this status.
Team of official is likely to visit Bangladesh, where it will take up the assignment of signing of free trade agreement (FTA) and Preferral trade agreement (PTA) with the government of Bangladesh, Noorani added.
Speaking on the occasion, Khalid Firoz, President of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) informed that the export stood at $14.4 billion against the target of $13.7 billion in out going fiscal year.
The steadiness in the economic policies and well-organized use of trade, fiscal and monetary policies has been helpful in pick up the pace of production, investment and export, said Firoz.
The KCCI Chief also expressed his concern over high rate of export financing which hasalmost surpassed nine percent that has created barriers for the exporters.
However Firoz warmly welcomed the induction of zero-rated regime, for both, customs tariff and sales tax.
Karachi Chamber has appealed India to eliminate all direct and indirect trade obstacles such as high custom tariff, subsidy to their industries, imposition of other taxes at customs stage and unfair system of valuation for having most favoured nations (MFN) status from the Government of Pakistan.
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