Trade ties with India resume
ECC allows import of sugar, cotton via land, sea routes
Federal Finance Minister Hammad Azhar addressing a presser at the Press Information Department (PID) in Islamabad on March 31, 2021. SCREENGRAB
ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan on Wednesday resumed trade with India as part of an understanding to gradually normalise bilateral relations and ensure food security of the country that is bracing for shortages of wheat, sugar and cotton.
The country had suspended bilateral trade with India on August 9, 2019 after “the Indian government’s unilateral action to change the status of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir”.
In the first place, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet, immediately allowed the import of 500,000 metric tons of sugar and unspecified quantity of cotton and yarn from India to bridge the nearly three million shortfalls.