KARACHI: FPCCI Businessmen Panel said on Saturday that if India wants towithdraw the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status towards Pakistan, it willhave no impact on the country.
Secretary General (Federal) Ahmad Jawad said: “Pakistan’s CPEC and otherinvestment projects are itself a pressure on Indian government, and that’swhy it has put blame on us time and again through Pulwama and Pathankotincidents because they want to isolate us economically.”
Jawad said MFN is a treatment accorded to a trade partner to ensurenon-discriminatory trade between two countries vis-a-vis other tradepartners. “The importance of MFN is shown in the fact that it is the firstclause in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Under WTOrules, a member country can not discriminate between its trade partners.”If a special status is granted to a trade partner, it must be extended toall members of the WTO, but unfortunately, we didn’t see to establishproper trade relations from India in the last years.
He briefed MFN essentially guarantees the most favourable trade conditionsbetween two countries. These terms include the lowest possible tradetariffs, the least possible trade barriers and very crucial to traderelations– highest import quotas. The disclaimer only requires equaltreatment to all Most Favoured Nations, “but yet Pakistan exports to Indiaremained bleak despite given us MFN status from the last twenty threeyears.”
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The MFN status was accorded to Pakistan under WTO’s General Agreement onTariffs and Trade (GATT), to which both India and Pakistan are a signatory.The principal states that each of the WTO member countries should “treatall the other members equally as ‘most-favoured’ trading partners”.Secretary General (Federal) Ahmad Jawad said: “Pakistan’s CPEC and otherinvestment projects are itself a pressure on Indian government, and that’swhy it has put blame on us time and again through Pulwama and Pathankotincidents because they want to isolate us economically.”
The MFN status was accorded to Pakistan under WTO’s General Agreement onTariffs and Trade (GATT), to which both India and Pakistan are a signatory.The principal states that each of the WTO member countries should “treatall the other members equally as ‘most-favoured’ trading partners”.
