Pakistan shares 5-year vision with China to boost trade ties
CHINA'S ECONOMIC COUNSELLOR AFFIRMS COUNTRY'S AIM TO INCREASE TRADE VOLUME FROM CURRENT $27 TRILLION TO $32 TRILLION IN COMING YEARS
PAKISTAN’S caretaker Federal Minister for Commerce and Industries, Dr Gohar Ejaz shared a five-year vision with China’s Economic Counsellor, Yang Guangyuan, to increase bilateral trade and economic cooperation. Dr Ejaz set a target of $25 billion for Pakistan’s exports to China, while Guangyuan expressed China’s willingness to include Pakistan in its trade expansion plan.
The two officials met on Wednesday in Islamabad, as part of the intensified interaction between the two countries in the field of trade. Dr Ejaz said he visited China recently to witness its remarkable progress and to seek new market segments for Pakistani exports. He also stressed his vision for Pakistan’s economic progress through “trade not aid”.
Guangyuan reaffirmed China’s commitment to stand with Pakistan. He said China aimed to increase its trade volume from the current $27 trillion to $32 trillion in the coming years, and offered to relocate industry from China to Pakistan’s export processing zones and utilise its cost-effective labour for accessing African and Central Asian markets.
The meeting came as Pakistan’s newly established Export Advisory Council set an ambitious export target of $50 billion in five years and $100 billion in the long term.
However, this would require a radical shift in trade policy and domestic reforms, as Pakistan’s exports have stagnated around $25-27 billion over the last decade, despite schemes like the GSP Plus.
Notably, China enacted the Foreign Trade Law in 1994, which updated its trade policy and built on the reforms since 1980. After joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001, China revised its trade policy again to follow WTO rules and regulations.
It also reduced its import tariff rates to below 9%. Currently, its trade-weighted average is around 3%. China did not seek any preferential access like the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) during these reforms; it focused only on domestic reforms.
The only thing it asked from major economies like the United States was to treat it like any other WTO member. China did not sign any bilateral or regional trade agreements until 2003.
Pakistani exporters, on the contrary, spend a lot of time and energy to persuade the government to get preferential market access through unilateral concessions from the major economies. They also get special treatment under SROS in the domestic market.
They got the GSP Plus concession in 2014, which gave their exports duty-free access to the European Union. This was supposed to be a big change. But nothing much changed.
Pakistan’s exports stayed around $25-27 billion over the next 10 years of the GSP Plus. Many other regional countries doubled their export shares during the same time through domestic reforms, while Pakistan saw an annual average drop of 1.45%.