Underlining that there are immense trade opportunities in Punjab, the Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal on Thursday asserted that he would soon pursue the case to revive the Wagah-Attari trade with the Central Government.
“International Wagah-Attari trade route is not just a road between India and Pakistan, but it is vital for prosperity and peaceful relations between both the neighbouring countries. And, its reach up to Central Asia will remain crucial for the economic upliftment and social welfare of the Punjabis,” said Manpreet, after launching a book “Unilateral Decisions Bilateral Losses”.
Gauging the points rose to lessen the international trade losses in the book, written by Afaq Hussain and Nikita Singla, the Director and Associate Director of Bureau of Research on Industry and Economic Fundamentals (BRIEF) respectively, a New Delhi-based research and policy think tank, Manpreet expressed grave concern over the current situation of trade with neighbouring countries.
“I, on the behalf of the Punjab Government, will pursue the case to revive the Wagah-Attari trade with the Government of India,” he said.
Notably, since February 2019, India-Pakistan relations have been sliding downhill after the militant attack in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian Government decided to withdraw the status of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) for trade granted to Pakistan since 1996.
“German Statesman Otto Von Bismark once remarked-the road to Berlin lies through Vienna. I sincerely feel that the road between New Delhi and Islamabad lies through Punjab. For Punjabis, a lot is at stake given their proximity to the shared border. Trade at Wagah-Attari had made this shared border a point of cooperation and interdependence,” he said.
Virtually joining the discussion on the book, Congress MP from Amritsar Gurjeet Singh Aujla said that Amritsar doesn’t have any real industry except for tourism which is also badly affected due to COVID-19. He urged the Centre to consider Wagah-Attari trade as a full-fledged industry for Amritsar that gives direct and indirect employment to more than 25,000 families. Revival of the trade is very important for the border district, he added.
In their book, the authors cited that in 2018-19, the bilateral trade between India and Pakistan stood at 2.5 billion US dollars – India’s exports to Pakistan accounting for 2.06 billion US dollars and India’s imports from Pakistan at 495 million US dollars.