NEW DELHI: Indian and Pakistani businesses are working together to find areas of mutual interest in trade and investment and lobby their respect governments to reform policy and open doors to businesses of both countries.
The Pakistan India Joint Forum held its first meeting in June 2013 and formed ten task forces to look for opportunities and iron out policy challenges in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, financial sector, textiles, energy, petroleum, trade facilitation and visa facilitation between India and Pakistan. The business leaders from both countries met every six months.
“We have formulated recommendations for each of these sectors and we hope both governments will consider them favourably. These recommendations are coming from the businesses themselves. Some businesses will have positive gains others won’t but we have agreed on the recommendations,” Sunil Kant Munjal, Joint Managing Director of Hero Motor Corp Ltd India and Past President Confederation of Indian Industry told Economy Next on the side lines of the first South Asia Economic Conclave, a private sector initiative to share ideas on how businesses and civil society and play an active role in integrating the South Asian region.
“These are joint recommendations that industry from both countries developed,” Syed Yawar Ali, Co-Chair Pakistan India Joint Business Forum and Chairman Nestle Pakistan Ltd, told Economy Next.
The Pakistan India Joint Business Forum was mooted by the governments of India and Pakistan in 2012 when they developed a road map to improve economic ties with each other.
“Before this many companies where doing this on their own and the governments came in and formalized the process. Those who had been looking for opportunities on their own were drafted into the official teams from both sides. We are working well together like a single team,” Munjal said.
“When we first started there were apprehensions on both sides because we could not understand the policies of each country. We did not know enough of each other but as more information got shared these apprehensions got dispelled,” Munjal said, adding that business in South Asia can do much more to improve intraregional economic, and should start by talking to each other and understanding each other before lobbying governments.
“The big challenge will come when we present our recommendations to both government,” Munjal said. “We have to push our own governments now, this will be the biggest challenge,” Ali said. Both men are confident the governments would look favourably on their recommendations.
Economy Next caught up with Munjal and Ali at the end of a gruelling second day at the South Asia Economic Conclave with sessions stretching one after the other for nearly 12 hours with only a hour-long lunch break to break the sessions and no tea or coffee breaks at all, such was the focus of the of the participants.
Both Ali and Munjal earlier shared some of the findings of the task forces of the Pakistan India Joint Business Forum.
“On trade facilitation, although India’s tariff regime was not all that bad, we discovered that India’s states had so many tariffs and non-tariff barriers. This is not right, we must address this issue head on,” Munjal.
