Pak-Turkey FTA to boost up textile exports

Pak-Turkey Free Trade Agreement(FTA) likely to increase export of textiles, agro and dairy products, and livestock, said Federal Minister of Commerce Khurram Dastgir Khan on Monday.

The Commerce Ministry would be conducting a pre-FTA study and hold extensive discussions with stakeholders to strike the best possible deal.
The Ministry of Commerce would be concluding all future trade agreements based upon market research and the lessons learnt from previous accords.

Dastgir said that the mechanism adopted to conclude these trade agreements in the past was also scrutinized to include modern best practices of negotiations and trade agreements.

This would greatly strengthen the institutional capacity of the ministry to become an efficient trade promotion institution which could safeguard the trade interests of the country at bilateral and multilateral forums.

The minister said that high tariffs were giving way to low tariffs and in order to protect local manufacturing, more and more countries were resorting to trade defence mechanisms instead of high tariffs.

Pakistan is in the process of strengthening the institutional and human resource capacity of its trade defence organizations by empowering them through laws which would be implemented soon.

The ministry has recently constituted Services Export Council, which would help promote the export of software, insurance and banking services to Turkey.

The ministry has also conducted review studies of FTAs with China, Malaysia and Sri Lanka to know the effects of agreements on Pakistan’s economy, imports and exports.