KARACHI, May 5: While the political leaders of India and Pakistan were engaged in exchanging messages and talking to each other on telephone to explore normalisation of bilateral relations last week, the business leaders of the two countries grabbed the opportunity to communicate with each other to explore the possibility of resuming normal trade relationship.

Top business leaders in India made several telephone calls at Karachi on Friday and Saturday to urge their friends and trade partners to activate the otherwise dead India-Pakistan joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They also want India and Pakistan to play a joint role in making SAARC an effective business union of South Asian businessmen.

Following these telephone calls from Delhi, the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry is discussing the issue of reactivating the joint chamber of India and Pakistan and possibility of resumption of normal trade relations in next meeting of its Managing Committee being held on Thursday at Lahore. The original agenda does not contain this issue but would have to be taken up as ‘other matter with the permission of the chair’.

Before resumption of trade, the business leaders in Pakistan want India to resume air, over-land and sea links between the two countries. “India snapped all these links in December 2001 and now it is India’s responsibility to resume these communications,” a senior business leader remarked.

The joint chamber of commerce and industry has remained inoperative since its formation for the obvious reasons. Only two meetings of its executive committees were held since its inception in January 1999. Business leaders in India carry bitter memories of the indecent intervention of Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry in January 1999 when FPCCI President Ilyas Bilour was about to sign a memorandum of understanding for the setting up of this joint chamber. That Bilour defied the advice of foreign ministry and put his signatures is another matter. The second meeting of the executive committee was held in May 2001 which was inaugurated by the then federal privatisation minister Saleem Altaf. Another meeting was due in December 2002 which could not be held.

Now that initiative for resumption of normalisation has come from Indian Prime Minister and that he offered to talk on all issues including Kashmir, business leaders in Pakistan are of the view that a big leap forward can be made.

What is the matter of satisfaction for the Pakistani businessmen is that Indian Prime Minister agreed to talk on all issues with Pakistan including Kashmir. “We cannot ignore Kashmir and Kashmiris while dealing with India,” Sheikh Jamil Mahboob Magoon, a member of the Executive Committee of India- Pakistan Chamber of Commerce said. Based in Lahore, Magoon also represents Pakistan in SAARC. He crossed India-Pakistan border in Punjab on foot only last month to attend a SAARC meeting held in Calcutta.

Magoon blames media—both print and electronic in India and Pakistan—of creating bitterness. “I did not see any bitterness in India,” he said. “Nonsense” he said when told that many Indians believe that quite a good number of Pakistanis are terrorists.

Riaz Tata, President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry also wants normalization of trade and business relationship between India and Pakistan. Also eager to foster this business relationship between the two countries is Ilyas Bilour the founding President of the joint chamber and who is now a co-president.

“We in South Asia constitute one-fifth of the entire humanity of the world and yet our total trade is hardly one per cent of the global business,” Bilour said. Riaz Tata, his successor in FPCCI and shares his views, said that South Asia has perhaps the poorest people. Trade and business are vehicles of progress and an effective way of poverty alleviation.

Trade or no trade on official level, India and Pakistan continue to do business through illegal channels or through third countries. While the regular trade volume hardly amounts to 200 to 250 million dollars a year, the illegal and circular trade through third countries is well over one billion dollars a year.

Perhaps we are the only two countries in the world—India and Pakistan—who opt to trade through illegal channels more than five times of the regular trade,” a trader said.

Pakistan has confined list of importable items from India to 600 and all those items which are not in this list remain banned. A big number of these items find their way in Pakistan market through land or sea smuggling or through third countries.

A document of Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has identified more than 16 items that are either smuggled into Pakistan directly or brought in from Dubai, Singapore or Hong Kong. These are textile machinery and equipment, tannery equipments, machine tools and equipments, cotton fabrics, tyres, chemical goods, viscose fibre, cosmetics, alcoholic beverages, stainless steel utensils, ayurvedic medicines, video tapes, cassettes, confectioneries and cashew nuts.

From Pakistan plastic goods, synthetic fabrics, melamine dinner sets, textile and clothing, woollies, wheat, sugar, edible oil and vegetable ghee is smuggled into India.

“We owe a responsibility to more than 1.3 billion people in India, Pakistan and other South Asian countries to provide them with good quality products at reasonable prices rather than serve the interest of smugglers,” Bilour said while expressing the hope that the recent resumption of talks should pave for the business relationship in the area.