March 27, 2007	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 7, 1428

ISLAMABAD, March 26: Pakistan has sought Canadian government’s intervention in the removal of bottlenecks for clearance of its cargo containers at the Canadian ports.

It was observed that in a developed country, like Canada, undue delay of containers at the ports of landing, diversion of cargo to other ports, inspection hassles and other tariff barriers add to the cost of doing business; and discourage Canadian importers to retain the supply chain with established Pakistani partners.

In an official reaction on Canadian trade policy regime, around 24 countries, including Pakistan, have offered comments and expressed their views about their perception of Canadian trade policy measures during the past four years during the recent trade policy review held at Geneva.

Pakistan, with other co-members, raised concerns about certain trade-related measures being taken by Canada, like tariff peaks, tariff escalation, agriculture tariff structure, investment regime, procurement policies, TRIPS issues and trade facilitation.

Bilateral trade between Pakistan and Canada hovering around US$ 600 million for the past four years is keeping a steady pace. Textile products accounting for 80 per cent of the total exports are, however, subject to higher import duties.

Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to WTO Dr Manzoor Ahmad in a country statement emphasised the need for Canada to revisit their preferential market access scheme for developing countries; and questioned their discriminatory visa policy for Pakistani businesspersons.

"We greatly appreciate the Canadian approach to trade and development, with respect to Paragraph 135 of their report, which reiterates their commitment to take into account the level of development of the developing countries and their ability to implement new agreements, while giving preferences," he said.

The envoy said Islamabad wonders as to when the Canadian authorities would think it appropriate to consider Pakistan’s case as other suppliers of these products, which may be at similar level of development, if not better, yet enjoy duty-free or preferential market access for one reason or the other.

On trade facilitation, "we are told that our containers face unnecessary delays upon reaching Canadian destinations for want of inspections, imposition of levies on inspections and diversion of cargo to other ports etc."

About four years ago, the same was happening to the Canadian exports entering Pakistan's territory.

When Pakistan removed certain bottlenecks unilaterally, it was observed that Canadian exports to Pakistan jumped by more than three-fold. Since then they have been rising every year.

"We expect Canada to give us similar treatment or at least MFN treatment on trade facilitation," the envoy added.

"We will also like to raise our concerns about immigration and visa policy of Canada. While we appreciate Canada's liberal policies about grant of visas to our professionals, who are in demand in Canadian market, our business leaders face serious problems in getting routine visas for even short business trips," the ambassador said.

Pakistan has also submitted a long list of queries with Canada for seeking necessary reply on these issues.

These questions are related to discriminatory practices to imports, impact of duty-free quota-free access to least developed countries on other developing countries, removal of non-tariff barriers, tariff escalation on farm products, licence requirement for import of fruits and vegetables and denying business visas to genuine businessperson.