ISLAMABAD, May 30: Pakistan has requested Saarc-secretariat to extend the date for holding experts’ committee. The meeting has been convened to conclude the proposed South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) allowing free trade among member countries.

Official sources told Dawn on Friday that the meeting was scheduled for June 9-12 in Katmandu.

“We have conveyed to the secretariat that due to the up- coming federal budget and the consideration of the issue of granting most favoured nation (MFN) status to India, Islamabad will not be in a position to participate in the meeting on that date,” said officials.

The member countries have already agreed in principle to finalize the agreement latest by 2005.

The experts committee had already held four rounds on SAFTA, said officials and added this would be the fifth round.

According to officials, in the next meeting to be fixed by the secretariat, the experts would discuss the realization of SAFTA as a goal latest by 2005.

During the meeting, the experts would discuss banking, port and transportation facilities setting up of reviewing and monitoring mechanism and consumer equitable benefits to all the member countries.

They would also discuss arrangements of shifting to SAFTA from South Asia Preferential Trade Arrangement (SAPTA) through all three approaches-product by product, sectoral basis and across the board basis.

Under SAPTA, Pakistan has so far given preferences in tariff on more than 763 items to the member countries, while Islamabad received preferences on around 788 items from these countries.

Officials said Pakistan has already constituted an inter- ministerial task force to formulate Pakistan’s position in the regional trade in South Asia.

The task force, the officials said, had already held five meetings in this regard to valuate all the aspects regarding the impacts and benefits of the proposed treaty on Pakistan’s economy.

With the signing of the SAFTA treaty, India would get maximum advantage even more than that which are available to them under MFN status, officials said.

According to officials for Pakistan, the biggest benefit would be the access to high yield technologies for all crops and to the process technology of India.

“Post liberalization of trade with India would not only take away the need to provide legitimate protection to our industry’s interest vis-a-vis market access to India and India’s access to our markets,” officials said.

Pakistan’s major regional trade partner in 2001-02 was India, followed by Bangladesh and Sri Lanka while the other trading partners remained at a very low level.