ISLAMABAD, March 6: The Senate's Special Committee (SSC) on Challenges of WTO has underlined the need for closer inter ministerial coordination in all areas relating to multilateral trading system and to develop indigenous expertise for meeting the challenges of the regime.

This was agreed in a meeting headed by the Minister for Privatization and Investment, Dr Hafeez Shaikh. The meeting was attended by relevant stakeholders along with members of the committee here on Saturday.

Mr Shaikh agreed with the proposal that the ministries and organizations dealing directly with WTO matters should be strengthened with technical personnel so that they become proactive in getting Pakistan prepared for the challenges of the WTO.

The Committee emphasized that the National Tariff Commission (NTC), the Institute of Foreign Trade and WTO Council should be activated to prepare the country for the task ahead.

Earlier, Dr Muhammad Zubair Khan, a WTO expert, briefed SSC on world trade matters and said that after the elimination of quotas, Pakistan would benefit in the areas where it was already touching the upper limit as it was capable of going beyond the present limit with increase in production particularly in yarn, cotton, hosiery items.

"However, for products where we could not even exhaust our present quota the chances are that Pakistan would even lose the market share it now enjoys. We need to improve our marketing skills and energize NTC to watch our national interests whenever some country is dumping its goods in the Pakistani market," he said.

Dr Ashfaque H. Khan an economist of repute while making his presentation on the Emergence of Regional Trading Blocs and their Implications for Pakistan said that Pakistan's textile industry was geared to the challenges of WTO, however, Pakistan should try to activate ECO and Saarc and endeavour to join some big regional trading bloc. Moreover, Saarc and ECO should be taken on board to take a unified position at all WTO forums, he said.

The members of the SSC, Senators Prof. Khurshid Ahmed, Mushahid Hussain Syed, Mr Muhammad Ishaq Dar, Dr Muhammad Akbar Khawaja, Mr Muhammad Azam Khan Swati, Mrs Roshan Khursheed Bharucha, Ch Muhammad Anwar Bhinder and Iftikharullah Babar Secretary Committee attended the meeting.