Pakistan’s move to suspend trade will hurt it only: TPCI

New Delhi, Aug 8 (IANS) Pakistan's unilateral decision to suspend trade and downgrade diplomatic relations with India on the back of mounting tensions over the abrogation of Article 370 on Jammu and Kashmir, will only hurt Islamabad's economic interests, the Trade Promotion Council of India said on Thursday.

According to TPCI, Pakistan's decision to suspended trade does not have any economic prudence as the country suffers from economic stress.

Estimates show that bilateral trade between India and Pakistan stands at $2.56 billion.

"We will not be losing much as Pakistan had not even granted us MFN (most favoured nation) status. Pakistan is an important export destination for India but not vice-versa," TPCI Chairman Mohit Singla said.

"This is despite the fact that Pakistan imposes a large number of NTMs (no-tariff measures) (143) on Indian exports, the major ones being export related measures (25.2 per cent); technical barriers to trade (24.5 per cent); and sanitary and phytosanitary measures (22.4 per cent). These are concentrated on agriculture, plants, and food-related products."

Major exports from India includes cotton (valued at $0.273 billion), p-Xylene ($0.082 billion), polypropylene ($0.063 billion) and single yarn ($0.088 billion) along with organic chemicals, plastics, maize, dyes, vaccines, tea, cumin etc.

On the other hand, Pakistan's major exports to India include dates ($0.113 billion), Portland cement ($0.078 billion), other petroleum oils ($0.055 billion) and light oils and preparations ($0.028 billion).