ISLAMABAD, July 2: The commerce ministry is finding it difficult to work out a comprehensive trade policy for the year 2005-06 in the absence of any worthwhile suggestions from various trade bodies and associations.

Informed sources told Dawn on Saturday that in the absence of any worthy proposals, the commerce ministry has already extended the announcement of the trade policy this year by around 10 days likely to be announced on July 28.

The sources said that for the first time in the history, very limited number of proposals, suggestions were received from almost all trade chambers, associations, non-government organizations and to some extent from government departments.

These sources maintained that again most of the proposals were related to tariff rationalization on products, which were not part of the trade policy making this kind of proposals even not entertainable at initial stage.

According to the sources, the trade bodies and exporters have lost confidence in the commerce ministry because it failed to implement the whole of the initiatives announced in the last two years trade policies.

The sources said that another big reason for the lukewarm response of the exporters towards the trade policy was the current tussle between the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) chairman and commerce ministry over the sharing of powers of the new proposed organization to be used for facilitation and promotion of external trade.

The sources said that the interest of the ministry could be gauged from the fact that so far only one or two meetings were held by the ministry with trade bodies.