Dawn September 2, 2004

LAHORE, Sept 1: Socio-economic cooperation between two provinces of Punjab of Pakistan and India can help accelerate political and economic cooperation between the two countries.

This was the consensus of speeches made by the economic experts and politicians at a seminar on 'Punjab-Punjab consultation: Exploring complementarities' arranged by the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) at a hotel here on Wednesday.

Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Anjum Nisar who presided over the meeting said increase in trade among the Saarc countries was not possible unless sincere efforts were made for confidence-building measures and the governments reduced their defence expenditure to spare billions of rupees for poverty alleviation and development of projects for the economic welfare of the people.

He said that the volume of smuggling of goods between the two countries was about $two billion and regular trade $250 million. The process would be reversed by 2006 when tariffs would decline to 20 per cent and five per cent by 2015 under the SAFTA agreement and the volume of regular trade was estimated to increase to $4 to 5 billion every year.

Former provincial finance minister Shahid Kardar said that cooperation between two Punjabs in economic and agriculture sector could help minimize illegal trade between Pakistan and India.

He said the illegal trade was approximately of the value of $ two billion half of which was through third countries like Dubai, Afghanistan and Singapore. Unofficial imports include cement, tyres, tea, medicines, videotapes and chemical products while items in demand include medicines, household products, iron ore, transport equipment, including motorcycles and motorcars, plastics, textiles, agricultural products none of which were on the permissible list. Informal exports from Pakistan include food products and synthetic fibre.

He said there would be several advantages of making trade free between the two countries like cheap transportation costs due to geographical proximity but it would require heavy investment in infrastructure of roads, railways and permission to each other's merchants' ships to call at ports.

He said that cooperation in agriculture sector would benefit the Pakistani farmers, as they would know the methods of increasing their productivity applied by the Indian farmers.

Similarly, Pakistan's textile sector would be benefited from an improved access to the huge Indian market. Pakistan's leather products will be welcomed in India. Opening of trade with India would have a salutary effect on prices and inflation rates would decline to the benefit of Pakistani consumers. The governments would also gain with an increase on revenue on custom duties, as regular legal trade would replace the smuggled goods.

Another economic expert Dr Salman Shah that said that historically northern India and Pakistani provinces in the north-west of India always had very close trading and commercial links.

The hostility of the past half a century had totally severed these links to the detriment of the entire northern subcontinent. Opening up trade could revive commercial links between Indian and Pakistani areas.

Dr Mubashir Hassan said that not only in the field of commerce and trade cooperation between the two Punjabs could also be achieved in other social and cultural fields.

In the literary fields both the Punjabs have great poets, scholars and writers like Waris Shah, Bulleh Shah, Baba Farid Ganjshakar and Baba Guru Nanak whose teachings could inspire the feelings of love and affection between the people of the two countries. He said that the people wanted peace and "we can show to the world that we want peace."

Agricultural expert Shah Mahmud Qureshi said that two Punjabs could benefit each other in the agriculture sector more than in any other sector. He said that there were many commonalities between the two Punjabs like language, social and cultural activities, weather, water resources, irrigation linkages, food production sufficient for most of their respective countries.

There could be possibilities of cooperation in the fields of research and development, agricultural extension methods, water-related issues and exchange of agricultural delegations.

SAFMA secretary-general Imtiaz Alam said that a 40-member goodwill delegation of people from different walks of life would leave for India on Sept 27 next and a similar delegation from Indian Punjab would visit Pakistani Punjab from Dec 1. He said that media could play an effective role in bringing the people of the two countries closer to each other.