Keeping the good history of Trade in Goods Agreement between Pakistan and Turkey, a mutual agreement has come into force from May 1, 2023 being signed in August, 2022. The Trade in Goods Agreement was signed by the Turkish Minister for Trade, Mehmet Mus and Federal Minister for Commerce Syed Naveed Qamar, and witnessed by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif.
This agreement is going to open up new opportunities to boost bilateral trade across various sectors. The idea to strengthen business-to-business interaction for trade and investment relations between the brotherly countries will harvest fruitful results in coming days. Besides, the agreement is going to bring into effect reciprocal tariff concessions extended to select exports of both the countries. Under the agreement, Pakistan has gained preferential access in the Turkish market under 261 tariff lines covering traditional as well as non-traditional sectors such as leather, rice, dates, mangoes, cutlery, sports goods, seafood, processed agricultural products, rubber tubes and tires, plastics, and engineering goods whereas concessions on 130 tariff lines have been extended to Turkey, including products such as black tea, processed food products and flavorings, industrial raw materials and parts of machinery, and parts of electronic equipment. Both countries have also agreed to achieve strategic goal of enhancing bilateral trade to US 5 billion dollars in the medium-term. Both countries signed a “Framework Agreement for Establishing a Free Trade Area between Pakistan and the Turkey” on March 22, 2016.
In the agreement, both sides indicated their commitment to gradually establish the Turkey-Pakistan Free Trade Area covering trade in goods. During this visit, minister for Commerce of Pakistan and minister for Trade of Turkey signed a Joint Ministerial Statement on “Developing Bilateral Trade and Economic Relations between the two countries”, whereby, both sides expressed the resolve to work for increasing bilateral trade to $ 5 billion in three years, as well as to expeditiously conclude the Trade in Goods Agreement on the basis of mutual benefit.
