India-Pakistan trade

  • Pakistan did a U-turn on a move for limited resumption of trade with India. 
  • A Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan rejected a decision made by a government panel to allow imports of sugar and cotton from India to control prices and overcome a shortage.
  • Pakistan’s interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters in Islamabad after the cabinet meeting that the move to permit imports from India was “deferred till Article 370 is not restored” and speaking in Urdu, he added, “till then, [imports of] cotton and sugar will not happen.”
  • Earlier on March 31, Pakistan's new finance minister Hammad Azhar had announced that the ban on imports from India has been lifted.

THE BAN

  • Pakistan’s decision to suspend bilateral trade with India in August 2019 was primarily a fallout of India’s decision to scrap Article 370. 
  • Pakistan called the move “illegal”, and took this trade measure as a way of showing its dissatisfaction. 
  • However, an underlying reason for suspending trade between the two countries was also the 200% tariff imposed by New Delhi.
  • This was a move that India implemented earlier that year after revoking its status as a Most Favoured Nation following the suicide bomb attack on the CRPF in Pulwama.

INDIA-PAK TRADE

  • Trade between the two countries suffered greatly in 2019-20, with India’s exports to Pakistan dropping nearly 60.5% to $816.62 million, and its imports plummeting around 97% to $13.97 million.
  • Cotton has been one of Pakistan’s major imports from India. 
  • In 2018-19, Pakistan imported $550.33 million worth of cotton from India. 
  • When coupled with $457.75 million worth of organic chemicals, these products made up around half of its total imports from India. 
  • In 2019-20, however, India’s cotton exports to Pakistan dropped to $64.25 million.
  •  Pakistan’s imports of sugar between July-February 2020-21 soared by nearly 6,296% to 278,733 metric tonnes from 4,358 metric tonnes in the same period in 2019-20.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hamas V. PLO

The irony in the ongoing conflict is that Hamas, whose founding members were encouraged by Israel in the 1970s and 80s against Yasser Arafat’s secular national movement, has turned out to be Israel’s biggest rival in the Palestinian territories. HAMAS Hamas was established after the first intifada broke out in 1987, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  Intifada was the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  The first intifada lasted from 1987 to 1993, and the second began in 2000. As strife between Israel and Palestine continued to soar as the latter resorted to the First Intifada, or uprising, in December 1987, Hamas as an organisation led by Sunni-Islamic fundamentalists, began to take shape.  Hamas could gain immediate and immense popularity within the protesting Palestinians because it was ...
Read more

G7 global corporate Tax Deal

Image
The Group of Seven (G7) countries have backed the proposal to impose a common global corporate tax. It would be aimed at preventing multinational businesses from evading taxes and also squeeze the havens which attract tax evaders due to the low-rate jurisdictions.  The consensus to adopt a common tax rate was reached at the G7 finance ministers' meeting held in Buckingham (London) on June 5.  THE PROPOSAL The tax proposal endorsed by the US, the UK, France and other G7 countries has two parts.  The main part of the proposal states that countries around the world should tax their home companies' overseas profits at a rate of at least 15%.  The companies have multiple branches spread across various jurisdictions, they transfer the bulk of their profit in accounts set up in countries that offer the lowest tax rate.  Often, these tax havens are the Caribbean Islands such as Bahamas or British Virgin Islands, or at times, countries like Ireland where the corp...
Read more

The statue of Swami Vivekananda at the JNU campus

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually unveiled a life-sized statue of Swami Vivekananda at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus on November 12. JNUSU (JNU students' union), un response, planned to protest on campus.  They believe the Modi government “openly supported” violence on campuses and is attacking universities with the National Education Policy which will result in fund cuts and privatization of education. FUNDING CONTROVERSY It was on June 30, 2017 that JNU’s Executive Council (EC) first gave approval for the statue.  The administration said it was installing the statue to give the campus a more “pleasing look” as Vivekananda had contributed to “nation building”. The administration remained mum on who was funding the statue and how much it would cost.  Then JNU Students’ Union president N Sai Balaji filed several RTIs to know about the funding. In January 2018, he filed an RTI seeking the total cost of construction of the statue as well as the sour...
Read more