ISLAMABAD, April 18: The Economic Cooperation Organisation Trade Agreement (ECOTA) has yet to be implemented despite a lapse of 10 years owing to the reluctance of three members.

The ECOTA was signed in Islamabad by the representatives of the ECO member countries on July 17, 2003 with a pledge of taking the trade liberalisation process forward by making accelerated progress towards actualisation of ECOTA by 2011 — a deadline which was missed because of non-ratification of the treaty.

Pakistan and Turkey have offered concessions on tradable goods, and submitted their lists. However, Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan have yet to exchange concessions lists with the member countries, which turn out to be the sole deterrence in the implementation of the agreement.

The five countries — Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Tajikistan ratified the agreements by the year 2008. Pakistan is the coordinating country for ECOTA. Even Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan have yet to ratify the basic agreement to formally join the club.

An official delegation led by Joint Secretary Mohammad Ashraf will leave on April 23 for Tehran to push for early operationalisation of ECOTA. The pact is now expected to come into force by the year 2015 in case the remaining three countries offered their concession lists of tradable products.

Under the agreement, it was agreed that the items being traded within the ECO region would constitute a positive list and no member country would either block or raise duty on it. The positive list would expand every year to give coverage to at least 5 per cent more goods for the coverage of 80pc of goods by the end of the eight years.

It was also agreed that the reduction in tariff would be done gradually in eight years time by reducing at minimum 10pc customs duty on each item of the positive list. The member countries would also take measures for removing non-tariff barriers on imports and exports for facilitating the trade among the member countries.

To provide protection to local industries, member countries can place those items in the sensitive list which are produced locally and will not be subject to tariff reduction. And those items which will not be offered for trading will be placed in the negative list of the agreement.

Currently, Pakistan’s trade with the ECO member countries stands at $2.3 billion. Of these Pakistan’s exports stood at $1.3 billion while $1 billion is imports from these countries.

An official source said that the other member countries appeared reluctant to start negotiations on the listing of items to be considered for duty reduction under the agreement for enhancing intra trade within the region.

Two member countries of the treaty — Turkey and Iran are least interested in making the agreement a reality, the source added.

Turkey is not willing to offer concessions on manufactured products because of its customs cooperation agreement with European Union and Iran is more of a protectionist country, he added.

When contacted Joint Secretary Mohammad Ashraf and official spokesperson of the commerce ministry told Dawn that there ‘is great potential in ECOTA for increasing the intra-region trade’.

Ashraf said the three large economies of Muslim countries including human rich Pakistan, resource rich central Asia and technology rich Turkey and petrol rich Iran can constitute a powerful regional economic bloc.

The entire trend in the world is towards regional integration and Pakistan in this regard has always played an active role, he said.