ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday cleared a legal mechanism to provide for barter trade with two sanctions-hit neighbours — Iran and Afghanistan.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet which also decided to build 500,000 tonnes of strategic reserves of sugar and lift 1.2 million tonnes of wheat at a minimum support price of Rs1,950 per 40kg amounting to Rs65 billion.
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The meeting, presided over by Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, did not approve Utility Store Corporation’s (USC) Ramazan subsidy scheme and subsidy on five key items for first 23 days of February but cleared it for March and the six remaining days of February.
According to an official statement, the meeting took up a commerce ministry’s summary for ‘grant of regulatory support for establishing barter trade arrangements with Afghanistan and Iran’ and, after discussions, “allowed regulatory cover to barter trade arrangements by amending relevant provisions of Export Policy Order (EPO) 2020 and Import Policy Order (IPO) 2020”.
