India, Pak to discuss fresh timeline for trade liberalisation

The meeting between Sitharaman and Khan will take place on the sidelines of SAFTA Ministerial Council in Bhutan on July 24.

"I will meet the Indian state minister for commerce for resumption of bilateral trade talks," Khan was quoted as saying.

It will be first high level trade interaction since the BJP came to power.

An official of commerce ministry said that trade liberalisation will be on the top of the agenda when the commerce ministers meet.

"We missed an early deadline of December 31, 2012 to remove all hurdles in the trade relations. Now the two governments will try to agree on fresh roadmap for it," he said.

He said India should address concerns of business community in Pakistan regarding non-tariff barriers and other issues which could impact export after trade liberalisation.

The two ministers will also discuss the agreements signed in 2012 to remove bottlenecks in trade facilitation.

Pakistan has already modified the politically sensitive issue of Most-Favoured Nation status to India by changing it to Non-Discriminatory (NDA).

It would also take up the issues of further trimming of the sensitive list, removing visa restrictions, allowing of banking channels and mobile connectivity, he said.

In 2012, Pakistan expanded the list of items tradable with India from 1,918 items to 5,800. Only 1,209 items now remain on the negative list.

Pakistan has 936 items on the sensitive list and India 614.

It will be second meeting of Pakistan's commerce minister with the Indian side after his visit in January during the tenure of the previous UPA government.

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Commerce Minister meets auto industry representatives

"Discussed issues facing automobile industry with representatives of Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM)," Sitharaman tweeted.

While comments from SIAM officials could not be immediately obtained, the industry body has been asking the new government to retain the current excise rate beyond the deadline of June 30.

In the Interim Budget, the excise duty on small cars, scooters, motorcycles and commercial vehicles were cut to 8 percent from 12 percent earlier.

The same for SUVs was slashed to 24 percent from 30 percent, while on large cars it was reduced to 24 percent compared from 27 percent earlier and mid-sized cars to 20 percent from 24 percent previously.

Ahead of the Budget, SIAM has also been asking for the roll out of GST, environmental clearance for industrial projects to kick start the economy so that it can have a trickle down impact on the sales of automobiles, particularly the commercial vehicles category, which witnessed 19th successive month of sales decline in May.

India's automobile industry has been struggling from a prolonged market slump. Car sales in India fell for the second consecutive fiscal in 2013-14 with a drop of 4.65 percent at 17,86,899 units as compared to 18,74,055 units in the previous fiscal...

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