ISLAMABAD, July 5: Pakistan remained behind India and Sri Lank in South Asia in terms of free flow of trade which bears witness to these countries’ openness to international trade and investment as part of their successful economic development strategy.

Pakistan is ranked at 84th position among the 118 other economies, whereas its neighbours, Sri Lank 70, India 71, secured slightly better positions as compared to Bangladesh (110) and Nepal (116), said “global enabling trade report-2008,” released by the Competitive Support Fund (CSF), covering 118 economies worldwide to present a cross-country analysis of a large number of measures facilitating trade.

The enabling trade index (ETI) captures the free flow of goods over borders and to destination.

Compared to other South Asian countries, including Pakistan, access to India’s market is fairly difficult, as it occupied 105th position on the relevant sub-index. Although tariff rates remain slightly lower in India, access is hampered by non-tariff barriers (115).

Access to Pakistani market is better as it was ranked at 98th position, followed by Sri Lank (70), Bangladesh (104) and Nepal (106).

Pakistan ranked at 106th position in terms of non tariff barriers, followed by Sri Lanka (77), Nepal (102), Bangladesh (105).

Though India has a restricted market access for goods but it has improved significantly in terms of border administration, which facilitate trade, which ranked them at (55), highly efficient and communication infrastructure at (52) and conducive business environment (58). The improvement in these areas made India ahead of other South Asian neighbouring countries.

Contrary to this, Pakistan’s has made significant improvement in over-all indices from market access to business environment. Pakistan ranked at 78th in border administration, 70th in transport and communication infrastructure and 83th in business environment.

But coming closer to India, Pakistan will have to improve border administration to facilitate trade, improve transport and communications infrastructure necessary to facilitate the movement of the goods from the border to destination.

Sri Lank ranked at 69th in border administration, 73th in transport and communication infrastructure, and 92th in business environment.

Bangladesh ranked at 97th at border administration, 103 in transport and communication and 111 in business environment.

Nepal ranked at 108 in border administration, 113 in transport and communication infrastructure and 118 in business environment.

Hong Kong and Singapore occupy the top two positions in the ETI ranking, followed by Sweden and Norway. Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand complete the top 10 list.

Arthur Bayhan, Chief Executive Officer of the Competitiveness Support Fund, said that Pakistan needs to put immediate attention to facilitate an environment conducive to trade and investment, including a transparent and efficient border administration, well developed transport infrastructure and highly efficient services.

He further added that Pakistan showed its competitive advantage on the indicators, such as non-tariff barriers, time for import, transshipment connectivity index, which is the type of transshipment connections available to shippers from Pakistan on bilateral routes, quality of rail road infrastructure, road congestions, linear shipping connectivity.