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India slams EU concession to Pak
March 13, 2003 15:19 IST
India on Thursday raised the contentious issue of higher GSP concessions to Pakistan with the visiting EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy.
"The issue came up for discussion among other issues," Lamy said, after his meeting with Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Jaitely in New Delhi.
India has expressed concern time and again over European Union's zero import duty on garments from Pakistan under the Generalised System of Preferences on the ground that it had successfully fought drug trafficking.
New Delhi wants that EU should extend similar concessions to India as it had made huge efforts to contain drug trafficking.
Due to zero import duty on Pakistan garments, the export of Indian garments to EU nations suffered an estimated loss of $300 million in a year.
Ahead of the crucial Cancun WTO ministerial in September, Thursday's meeting was overshadowed by multilateral issues with both sides trying to seek commonality of views on some areas, though some bilateral issues did figure in the meeting.
"We discussed a large number of bilateral and multilateral issues to try to look for areas where we could be convergent, especially in the wake of Cancun Ministerial," Jaitely said.
Jaitely said both India and EU shared similar stand on various issues including market access for agriculture goods and medicine, TRIPs (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) and textile quotas but added that there were differences in some areas.
EU and India's convergence of views on TRIPS and market access of agri products assume signifiance as these had hit a road block in the recent mini-Ministerial in Tokyo.
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