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The experts' committee meeting of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) will be held in the Maldives capital, Male, from March 22 to resume stalled negotiation, sources said.
The seventh experts' level meeting was scheduled to be held from February 26 in the same place. But the three-day meeting was deferred following Pakistan's refusal to participate, they added.
The South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) secretariat at Kathmandu sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs communicating the postponement of the seventh experts' level meeting on February 14.
The holding of the meeting was cancelled when Pakistan informed the SAARC Secretariat that it would not be able to send anybody to the meeting as their experts would not be available during the time, the letter added.
Such development was, otherwise, frustrating for the countries of the region as it followed the sudden postponement of the much-talked-about 13th SAARC summit in Dhaka, said a local trade expert.
"But situation has become normal as Maldives announced the fresh date to host the meeting," he added.
According to experts, Maldives announced the fresh date through mail that reached the commerce ministry officials Wednesday.
Ministry officials Thursday held an inter-ministerial meeting to review the overall development of the agreement and country's possible strategy for the upcoming meeting, source said.
The meeting, chaired by the commerce secretary, expressed satisfaction at the latest development as the seventh round meeting of the experts is very important for advancement of the economic cooperation of the South Asian region, they added.
Issues like negative list, rules of origin, technical assistance and revenue loss compensation mechanism will be sorted out in the meeting, source said.
Experts of the seven nations made some progress on the issues of sensitive list and rules of origin but they could not make any significant progress in the remaining two issues like technical assistance and revenue loss compensation mechanism, they added.
Bangladesh placed a negative list of 1306 items with tariff line of 25 per cent against India's 927 with tariff line of 17.75 per cent and Pakistan's 1157 with tariff line of 22.15 per cent in the last meeting.
Sri Lanka had placed a negative list of 1065 products, Nepal 1315, Bhutan 132 and the Maldives 582 with tariff line of 20.93 per cent, 25.17 per cent, 0.03 per cent and 11.14 per cent respectively.
There are 258 products common in the negative list of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Number of common products in the negative list between Bangladesh and India is 396 and between Bangladesh and Pakistan are 557.
These are agro-based products, milk, tomato, onion, cabbage, soybean seed, tobacco, sugar, tobacco, toiletries, plastic, rubber, cloth and cotton made fabric and frozen foods.
About the rules of origin, the officials said Bangladesh would stick to its earlier position. Bangladesh favoured 30 per cent value addition criteria in the case of rules of origin while India took a tough stand on rules of origin and favoured a minimum 40 per cent value addition. Pakistan wanted it to be 35 per cent.
The Male round of talks at the experts' level is considered very important as the committee of experts have to settle the issues before May 31 next so that the participating countries can find time to resolve contentious issues before the agreement comes into force.
The SAFTA is due to come into force in January 2006 after the treaty was signed last year at the 12th SAARC summit in Islamabad.
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