India has decided to remove non-tariff barriers (NTBs) it imposes to restrict products from other countries as part of their responsibility as the regions biggest economy to help boost the regional trade among the SAARC countries, Indian Minister of State for Commerce Jai Ram Ramesh said on February 17. They have eventually decided to remove the NTBs with Pakistan, Bangladesh and others, he said, adding that India has already taken few measures to remove the trade barriers. India is now looking positively to remove tariff, nontariff and technical barriers to trade as part of their new look to the regional economic cooperation. He spoke of Trade Liberalisation Programme (TLP) under South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement and technical assistance to the members of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) at the inaugural session of a two-day second SAARC Business Leaders Conclave that began on February 17.

Ramesh said SAFTA has now become operational with the notification on the TLP by every member states after many years of negotiation but the challenges remained in the next couple of years to address. It requires collective efforts to review and reduce the sensitive lists of products to make SAFTA meaningful, he said, apprising that there are some 750 items on the Indian sensitive list. The meeting was told that some 52 items of Bangladesh exportable to Indian market had remained on the sensitive list of India. The real bottleneck to deepening the intra-SAARC trade cooperation was the Non Tariff Barriers (NTBs) that the bureaucrats had so ingeniously created, the Indian State Minister pointed out. He said India was a latecomer in the process of regional economic cooperation, but came up aggressively with determination in the process during last few years.

India has decided to reduce the import duty under the SAFTA as reflection of its commitment. Ramesh said India was now negotiating free trade agreement (FTA) with Bangladesh, which would be done within next few weeks or next few months. About the barriers to trade in the region, he said India has undertaken a project of US$ 200 million to develop 13 land customs stations along the Indian borders with Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Myanmar.