ISLAMABAD, Nov 16: The Saarc Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) has called for the timely implementation of the South Asia Free Trade Area (Safta) early next year.

The SCCI in “Saarc Business Leaders’ Conclave” to be held in New Delhi on Thursday would jointly persuade all member states to resolve all issues to enable this process of Saarc free trade to start on time.

A press release issued here said that the business community of South Asia was looking forward to the proposed start of FTA from January 1, 2006. “We as the private sector of South Asia are concerned at the delay in the announcement of schedules of phasing out tariff concession,” the chamber said.

In spite of SAPTA, the intra-regional trade in Saarc could not go above 4 per cent of the total regional trade. The SCCI and its constituents welcomed the three real vital agreements signed at the Saarc heads of state summit covering avoidance of double taxation, customs harmonization and setting up of Saarc arbitration council.

However, there are certain other issues especially with respect to infrastructure and trade facilitation like creating networks of road, railways, air and shipping to ensure seamless connectivity across South Asia to create the enabling framework for Safta if its benefits have to be percolate to the business community.

The chamber further says that the Safta scope is limited to trade in goods, a priority agenda is the extension of Safta scope to cover trade in services and investment liberalization. For this an encouraging investment climate is essential and concluding a regional investment agreement with Saarc to facilitate intra investment inflows.