Pakistan stays away from corona talks

AAJ KI DELHI / INDIAN NEWS ONLINE

Pakistan on Wednesday stayed away from a video-conference India arranged to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade among the SAARC nations.

The senior officials of the Ministry of Commerce of the Government of India and their counterparts from five of the six other SAARC nations took part in the video-conference and discussed the impact of travel restrictions and the larger COVID-19 situation on intra-regional trade. No representative from Pakistan Government participated in the meeting.

New Delhi arranged the video-conference as a follow-up to the virtual summit Prime Minister Narendra Modi had held on March 15 with the leaders of almost all other SAARC nations to discuss the ways to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and its human and economic implications.  Though Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had not participated in the virtual summit, his Special Advisor on Health Affairs, Dr Zafar Mirza, represented him.

The representative of Pakistan Government had also participated in the video-conference of the SAARC health officials on March 26.

But Pakistan is the only SAARC nation which has not contributed to the COVID-19 Emergency Fund created by all other nations in the bloc.

The SAARC trade officials, who participated in the video-conference on Wednesday, recognized that the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown, transport curbs and travel restrictions have a considerable adverse impact on trade in the South Asian region. “It was stressed that new ways and means be jointly identified to sustain and expand the intra-regional trade until the normal trade channels are fully restored. The imperative need to maintain essential trade within the SAARC region was viewed as an important thrust area for favourable consideration,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) stated in a press-release issued after the video-conference.