ISLAMABAD, July 1: Pakistan and Thailand have agreed to start counter trade in their respective currencies for boosting bilateral trade, and proposed to form a rice exporting consortium of four Asian States including India and the Philippines for organized export of rice around the world.

This was agreed to here on Monday at a meeting between Commerce Minister Abdul Razak Dawood and his Thai counterpart Adisai Bodharamik.

The two ministers told the waiting journalists that both countries have agreed to double the bilateral trade without involving dollar.

The Thai minister explained that if Pakistan purchased goods from Thailand in local currency (Bhat) his country would also buy goods of equivalent amount in Pakistan currency.

He was of the view that then there would no need to increase the trade in dollar terms but the increase in volume would become more important.

Commerce minister Abdul Razak Dawood supported the Thai concept and said that it was practicable. He said he would be paying a visit to Thailand later to formalize this new concept into reality.

The bilateral trade stood at $220 million but the two ministers believed that it could be doubled through the new concept of using local currency.

Sources said that secretary commerce Qamar Beg Mirza had suspected that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) might have objections to the idea of counter trade but the visiting minister explained that his country was already doing the same with Malaysia, Singapore and a couple of other countries.

The proposal of putting in place a four-nation Asian consortium of rice exporting countries involving Pakistan, Thailand, India and the Philippines was also floated by the visiting commerce minister and his Pakistani counterpart supported the idea.

The Thai delegation was of the view that Pakistan’s basmati rice was of supreme quality in the world but the mixture of broken rice by the exporters had marred its image, which the Pakistan government should counter.

Thailand has also offered Pakistani businessmen to invest in food processing units as that country had enough fruit surplus, so that Pakistani companies could export the processed fruit to the Muslim countries.

The Thai commerce minister told the meeting that Muslim countries were currently hesitant of importing juices and processed fruits from Thailand and Pakistani investment could be of great benefit to that country.

The Thai minister said that his country was ready for joint ventures in auto parts, garments, chemicals and food processing in Pakistan in addition to setting up of refineries and construction of dams without tenders and contracts.

The two countries have extended most favoured nation status to each other a few years ago but issues relating to duties and taxes could not be resolved as yet.

Dawood told reporters that a team of Commerce Ministry, Central Board of Revenue, State Bank of Pakistan and public sector stakeholders would be visiting Bangkok soon to resolve the issue.