The government and businessmen should exploit trade potential in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations instead of focusing on India alone, as for the last 20 years, the exercise to enhance trade with the neighbouring country has proved futile, experts said on Saturday.Financial analyst Muhammad Mubashar Bashir said the government and the businessmen concentrate on trade with India and neglect other SAARC countries, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal.A visit to Sri Lanka or Bangladesh shows that their markets are flooded with Indian goods from automobiles to home appliance and from industrial raw material to daily use grocery items.Pakistani businessmen eyeing 1.4 billion Indian markets have not given importance to these small markets. The combined population of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh is more than the population of Pakistan. “By targeting the markets of these two countries Pakistani businessmen can double their market reach,” the analyst observed.While the Indian Prime Minister Modi visited these SAARC countries to gain market access for Indian businessmen there have been no such move from the Pakistani government. The analyst urged the government and the private sector to plan their business strategies based on penetrating these SAARC markets.Former president Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry Farooq Iftikhar said, “Trade with India is a mirage as Indians continue to create technical hurdles ensuring that nothing from Pakistan penetrates the Indian market with ease.”There are many products that did manage to enter the Indian markets and their acceptance give businessmen the hope that if minor non-tariff hurdles are removed they will have access to a huge consuming population across the border.Cement manufacturers have to get quality certification from Indian experts and the procedure to obtain that certificate takes six months and is granted for one year only. Moreover, the renewal process starts after expiry of earlier certification which again takes six months.Moreover, exporting cement through railway wagons has been effectively banned. Only a few cement loaded trucks are cleared by the Indian customs at Wagah border. However, hundreds of trucks loaded with cement raw materials, which are available abundantly in Pakistan, are cleared promptly by the custom authorities. A textile entrepreneur Mian Muzzafar Ali said the Indian designs about Pakistan could be judged easily by its deeds.
