Pakistan will not ink the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Iran, rather it will first prefer to make Preferential Trade agreement (PTA), which is already effective since long and giving the required dividends, Abdur Razak Dawood, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce, Textile & Production and Investment has said.
In remarks, Dawood said Prime Minister Imran Khan was paying an official visit to Iran on April 21 where leadership of both the countries would sit together to explore ways to do more trade under the PTA in the presence of US sanctions.
He went on to say that in the past, Iran unilaterally imposed duties on Pakistani items and Pakistan did the same. “Pakistan’s exports to Iran just stand at the negligible $35 million under the existing PTA,” he added.
Moreover, Razak said India, China and Turkey were doing trade by establishing a specific bank, adding that these countries were in business with Iran and the waiver they had got from sanctions was also short-lived.