OREANDA-NEWS. April 16, 2012. India and Pakistan have expressed their desire to fast track the ongoing process of bilateral trade in petroleum products and electricity.

This was stated in the joint statement issued after the meeting between commerce ministers of India and Pakistan Anand Sharma and Makhdoom Mohammad Amin Fahim, respectively, here on Saturday.

Both sides also agreed to discuss the modalities on complete phasing out of Pakistan’s Negative List of trade with India, a pre-requisite for according ‘most favoured nation’ status to India in the next meeting of the commerce secretaries to be held in Islamabad during May.

The two countries, however, expressed satisfaction that the transition process for complete normalisation of the trade in goods and services, including investment, had started.

Both sides also agreed to take further action to encourage greater trade through the new Integrated Check Post inaugurated on Friday at Attari-Wagah border. The new arrangement is expected to enable a substantial increase in the movement of goods traffic across the border.

Also, it will now be possible for trade to be conducted over longer hours during any working day. It was agreed that Pakistan will take necessary steps to remove restrictions on items permitted to be imported through the land route.

The objective is to permit all items not in the Negative List to be traded across the land border at Attari-Wagah.

It was also agreed that discussions would continue at the official level to draw a roadmap for further reductions in the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) sensitive lists.

“While reducing the SAFTA lists, both sides would appropriately consider requests received for tariff lines to be removed,” the statement said.