ISLAMABAD: Commerce Minister Amin Fahim has said that the government is committed to completely liberalise trading regime with India after addressing concerns of local industries.

“The abolition of the negative list is still in progress, and the cabinet has already approved it,” the minister said while replying to questions at a post-trade policy press conference here on Thursday.

The minister said that the cabinet did not reverse its earlier decision of complete liberalisation of trade with India.

Pakistan switched over to negative list based trading regime with India on March 1, 2012, and 1,209 items are still on the negative list which are prohibited for trade with India.

Pakistan held out an assurance to India last year that it would abolish the negative list by Dec 31, 2012 which was delayed because of concerns from local industries.  “We cannot destroy our local industries and will have to address their concerns before opening our border for Indian products,” the commerce minister remarked.

In the post-trade liberalisation period with India, Pakistan’s exports to India reached $355.01 million in just six months (April-September 2012).

Total exports from Pakistan to India in the whole year of 2011-12 were $401.19 million. This shows that in the next six months, Pakistan exports would reach around a billion mark.

Contrary to this, Indian exports to Pakistan stood at $793.48 million in April-Sept period of 2012-13.

Indian total exports to Pakistan in 2011-12 were $1.54 billion.

The exports did not reflect the real impact of liberalization.

Indian financial year starts from April and ends in March. Pakistan’s financial year starts from July and ends in June.

Amin Fahim said that export target of $95 billion was well in reach as concrete initiatives have been taken in the Strategic Trade Policy Framework (STPF) 2012-15 to achieve this target.

The break-up of the target is $27 billion for the year 2012-13, $31 billion for 2013-14 and $37 billion for 2014-15.

Commerce Secretary Muneer Qureshi said that for the first year of the EXIM Bank, seed money of Rs1 billion has been proposed. For the three years, the total amount would be Rs5 billion, he added.

He said the total amount for EXIM Bank would be met from export development surcharge.

The secretary said that the finance ministry cannot overrule the decision of the cabinet by withholding the release of funding for the trade policy.

The commerce minister ruled out the impression that the policy would be changed once the government changes as the current government was completing its tenure in March 2012.

Regarding filing of application for GSP plus scheme, the secretary said that it will be submitted in February.

The container issue under the Afghan transit trade would be resoled shortly, he added.