Pakistan’s Prime Minister held a meeting with the business community to find ways to boost the economy through exports. Karachi’s business community lauded the Prime Minister’s determination to deal with economic issues, but advised him to focus on bringing political stability for “change”. Especially the advice on doing business with countries with high energy costs, including India. However, bilateral trade with Pakistan was stopped by Islamabad in 2019.
Recently, some video clips of the meeting with the business community of Pakistan have gone viral on social media. In this meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s business leaders urged him to initiate trade discussions with India to promote trade and commercial activities, which will greatly benefit the country’s underfunded economy.
According to online reports, Arif Habib, head of capital markets giant Arif Habib Group, said, “Since taking charge, you have joined hands which have yielded good results and progress on the IMF deal is one of them. I would suggest That you join hands slightly more. One of them is on trade with India, which will greatly benefit our economy.”
Why was the India-Pakistan trade stopped?
Pakistan ceased bilateral trade with India in August 2019, after the Indian government abrogated Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. India took this step after the Pulwama terrorist attack in the same year. On February 14, 2019, a terrorist from the Pakistani group Jaish-e-Muhammad rammed an explosives-laden car into a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy at Lethpora, a village in Pulwama on the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway. , This resulted in the death of 40 personnel.
Pakistan may reconsider trade with India for several reasons. According to several reports, again there are two factors to note, initially, the government of Pakistan is under a lot of pressure. Shehbaz Sharif talks about double exports while despite India being a massive neighboring market, Pakistan has struggled to capitalize on this potential. Secondly, India’s economy dwarfs Pakistan’s by a factor of ten. While India will continue to grow regardless, Pakistan stands to gain more from resuming trade.
