KARACHI, March 30: Pakistani business regulators have been accused of ignoring the importance of regional trade agreements, bilateral trade agreements , free trade agreements and preferential trade agreements in policy formulation and this is now a matter of concern after the collapse of Cancun negotiations.

"Pakistan has not been able to capitalize on the arrangements of regional trade agreements outsourced from the WTO framework," stressed Engineer M.A. Jabbar while delivering a lecture on "Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference: Main Issues and Reasons for Failure" on Monday.

The lecture was given to the government officers of commerce and trade group. "The Cancun failure should amount to a concern for Pakistan as the choice for the country is to claim the opportunities in multilateral trading system dominated by the most favoured nation concept," he said.

He urged for activating trade growth within regional trade agreements, bilateral trade and specific agreements and also at the same time strengthening the compliance weaknesses.

Mr Jabbar, who is also the in-charge of the WTO Centre at FPCCI, observed that Cancun failure looked pre-ordained as negotiations remained incomplete during Doha to Cancun and many agreements could not be finalized against the deadline.

The Doha Development Agenda based on 52 plus nine public health paragraphs was squeezed to 32 paragraphs of the Cancun ministerial text, which has no mention of any work agreed in terms of the Doha Development Agenda.

He expressed his strong disapproval of the position papers circulated by the Pakistan government at the Cancun meeting in which support was expressed for Singapore issue, namely trade facilitation, trade and investment and competition and procurement.

Mr Jabbar observed China had played a vary guarded role at Cancun appearing on surface to torpedo the settlements but in his speech the Chinese minister wished all success. India, he said, opposed the Singapore issues and other developing and least developed countries followed the research and study of the Indians.