ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and the United States have decided to intensify engagement in agricultural and digital trade, the Pakistan commerce ministry said on Friday after the conclusion of a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) ministerial meeting in Washington.
Commerce Minister Syed Naveed Qamar met on Thursday with US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and other senior US officials for the first ministerial level meeting of the US-Pakistan trade and investment body in seven years. The last such meeting took place in 2016 in Islamabad.
Pakistan hopes the meetings would help strengthen ties between the two countries, strained in recent years by political tensions, and help boost bilateral trade in goods and services, which Pakistan says now totals about $12 billion.
“In recognition of the importance of agricultural and digital trade to the economic relationship, the Ministers [Qamar and Tai] directed officials to intensify engagement in these areas in advance of the next TIFA Council meeting,” the commerce ministry said in a joint statement.
Among trade and investment-related issues and concerns discussed at Thursday's meeting were agriculture, digital trade, intellectual property protection and enforcement, labor rights, regulatory practices and women’s economic empowerment.
“Both governments resolved to increase dialogue on these topics, in order to deepen the economic bilateral relationship and further the prosperity of working people in both countries,” the statement said.
The US appreciated Pakistan's efforts to improve worker rights and protections and strengthen its intellectual property regime. Both sides affirmed the importance of an effective intellectual property (IP) regime, achieving high labor standards, and following good regulatory practices, according to the statement.
The US welcomed the “substantive conclusion” of technical work on market access for beef from the United States while Pakistan appreciated ongoing engagement on market access for its mangoes and dates and asked the US to review additional access requests for agricultural products.
“Both sides expressed their intent to enhance engagement on market access and the reduction of barriers for additional agricultural products,” the statement said.
The next TIFA Council meeting will take place in Islamabad in 2024.
On Thursday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the TIFA council meeting exemplified Washington's commitment to "deepening our economic and commercial ties with Pakistan."
“We believe that a robust trade relationship between the United States and Pakistan is more important than ever to bolster Pakistan’s economic stability as it recovers from devastating floods, while at the same time also providing opportunity to Americans and to American businesses in this country, exposing them to new markets – Pakistani markets in this case,” he said.
“Our trade relationship with Pakistan has helped both Pakistani industries and consumers. We have long been Pakistan’s largest export market, with potential for even further growth, hence the meeting today. And we believe there is great potential to expand bilateral trade with Pakistan further, particularly in energy, agricultural equipment and products, franchising, retail trade, information and communications technology products and services.”
Price said the US had been a leading investor in Pakistan for the past two decades, and in the past year its investments had increased by some 50 percent.
“US investment in Pakistan is the highest it’s been in over a decade, and US corporations have announced more than $1.5 billion in investment plans in Pakistan since 2019,” he said. “US companies and their local affiliates, moreover, are among Pakistan’s largest employers, with roughly 80 US companies directly employing more than 120,000 Pakistanis.”
