MULTAN, March 7th: The business Community of South Punjab has hailed the decision of the International Trade (INTA) Committee of EU Parliament which has extended the Generalised System of Preferences-Plus (GSP-Plus) status for Pakistan, enabling the country to continue to enjoy preferential duties on exports for the next two years. President of Multan Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI) Sheikh Fazal Elahi, Senior Vice President Mian Rashid Iqbal and Vice President Nadeem Ahmed Sheikh conveyed their gratitude to the European Union for providing this unilateral trade concession to Pakistan. “We hope that the business community will capitalise further on this trade enhancement opportunity,” They said that the GSP-Plus facility has been available to us since January 2014, its continuation is an award for our country’s progress in enacting new laws and developing new institutions for implantation of 27 core conventions of GSP-Plus, especially the National Action Plan (NAP) for human rights.They further said that It is a good augury that European Commission and External Action Service has recommended at both the forums to continue the GSP-Plus scheme and stated their monitoring priorities for the next biennial monitoring cycle, which are given in the report. There is a clear indication that the EU authorities are satisfied with the results of the third biennial assessment of GSP-Plus and are focused on the next biennial monitoring cycle.In view of the outcome of the third biennial review of GSP-Plus, the MCCI office bearers commended the efforts of all ministries and departments of the provincial and federal governments as well as the governments of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan that cooperated and formulated laws, developed policies and established institutions to implement the 27 conventions related to GSP-Plus.They thanked the EU institutions for the extension. “This wil strengthen our resolve to continue to improve the social and economic conditions of our people,” they said, asking the business community to “diversify our exports to capitalise on this opportunity to the optimum”.
