News:Pakistan remains behind India and Sri Lanka
Name of the Newspaper: Khaleej Times
Date of publication: Sunday, 06 July, 2008
Website:

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan remained behind India and Sri Lanka in South Asia in terms of free flow of trade which bears witness to these countries’ openness to international trade and investment as part of their successful economic development strategy.

Pakistan is ranked at 84th position among the 118 other economies, whereas its neighbours, Sri Lank 70, India 71, secured slightly better positions as compared to Bangladesh (110) and Nepal (116), said “global enabling trade report-2008,” released by the Competitive Support Fund (CSF).

The enabling trade index (ETI) captures the free flow of goods over borders and to destination.

Compared to other South Asian countries, including Pakistan, access to India’s market is fairly difficult, as it occupied 105th position on the relevant sub-index. Although tariff rates remain slightly lower in India, access is hampered by non-tariff barriers (115).

Access to the Pakistani market is better as it was ranked at 98th position, followed by Sri Lank (70), Bangladesh (104) and Nepal (106).

Pakistan ranked at 106th position in terms of non tariff barriers, followed by Sri Lanka (77), Nepal (102), Bangladesh (105).

Though India has a restricted market access for goods but it has improved significantly in terms of border administration, which facilitate trade, which ranked them at (55), highly efficient and communication infrastructure at (52) and conducive business environment (58). The improvement in these areas made India ahead of other South Asian neighbouring countries.

Contrary to this, Pakistan has made significant improvement in overall indices from market access to business environment. Pakistan ranked at 78th in border administration, 70th in transport and communication infrastructure and 83th in business environment.

But coming closer to India, Pakistan will have to improve border administration to facilitate trade, improve transport and communications infrastructure necessary to facilitate the movement of the goods from the border to destination.