ISLAMABAD: The government on Thursday put off a cabinet meeting scheduled today to approve grant of the most-favoured nation (MFN) status to India.

“Yes, the meeting has been postponed,” Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Pervaiz Rashid told Dawn.

One reason of the postponement Mr Rashid pointed out was that some of the cabinet members were not available for the meeting to approve the decision.

India is going for elections in May, and the PML-N government would now strike a trade deal with the new government, the information minister said.

Spokesman for the commerce ministry, Muhammad Ashraf, told Dawn that the cabinet was scheduled to discuss, among other things, matters related to trade with India during the meeting.

“The ministry always remains prepared and provides professional input to the cabinet whenever a matter related to trade is to be discussed in the cabinet,” Mr Ashraf said.

The cabinet meeting was to take two important decisions regarding trade with India — abolishing the negative list of tradable items (1,209 items) and allowing import of more than 7,000 items via Wagha border.

Abolishing the negative list, items that cannot be imported from India, means the grant of MFN status to the neighbouring country.

Currently, only 138 items are importable from India via Wagha border.