SMC meeting from today
The meeting of SAFTA Ministerial Council (SMC), is starting in the capital from today.
The SMC meeting is expected to discuss and clear intra-regional free trade issues for the forthcoming 14th SAARC summit scheduled for April in New Delhi.
The first SMC meeting and the committee of experts (CoE) meeting took place in Dhaka in April 2006.
Besides review of the free trade area pact implementation, SAARC ministers will be discussing a report forwarded by the expert group on better implementation of the SAFTA agreement in a bid to promote and enhance mutual trade and economic cooperation among the contracting states.
The Himalayan Times daily quoted sources as saying that removal of non-tariff and para-tariff barriers will also be on the agenda of the meeting as well as inclusion of Afghanistan in SAFTA.
Afghanistan will formally become a SAARC member during the forthcoming summit.
The two-day long meeting of the SAFTA CoE that concluded on Sunday has agreed to forward the unresolved agenda for the ministerial council meeting scheduled for Monday.
Although the CoE, a commerce joint-secretary level technical group, couldn't make any breakthrough on the unresolved issues, the participating delegates agreed to forward the agenda for ministerial level meeting to get a go-ahead, said a participant of the meeting.
The unresolved issues include removal of non-tariff and para-tariff barriers, fine-tuning the dispute settlement mechanism and finalising the list of sensitive items for each of the seven members.
SAFTA envisions zero duty trading by 2012, following a series of annual cuts. However least developed countries of the region, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and the Maldives, will get an additional three years to acquire zero duty status. nepalnews.com pb Feb 26 07
