Our worthy senators would no doubt have been pleased the other day when advisor to PM on commerce, Razzaq Dawood, informed them that the European Union (EU) had formally extended its Generalised System of Preferences (GSP)-Plus facility for Pakistan until 2023. With all sorts of avenues for government revenue presenting problems because of the coronavirus pandemic, from tax earnings to dropping remittances, any good news on the trade front is more than welcome. The EU is one of our major trade partners and the GSP-Plus program, which gives our products duty free access to the Union on 91 per cent of their tariff lines, helped us maintain an almost two billion dollar trade surplus with the continent only last year. But the able senators must also have noticed that in all the years of its implementation – it has been operational since 2014 – the GSP-Plus program hasn’t really improved our trade numbers in any significant way. In fact, for a brief moment some years ago, our export revenue from the continent actually dipped despite this access. The main reason, sadly, is inefficiency and incompetence in Pakistan’s government machinery as well as the manufacturing sector. For despite all the agreements we have made or are trying to make with all sorts of trading partners across the world, Pakistani products are still without much value addition, which effectively renders them uncompetitive in the big players’ markets. It ought to be a matter of serious concern that in the seven decades since partition, India has grown to export sophisticated IT (information technology) products while we were never really able to move beyond fruits, cement and clothes. It must also be said that the commerce ministry of today, as well as the past few years, seems to lack the vitality that is needed to tap new markets and sign landmark deals. The last time the ministry was really proactive was in General Musharraf’s time; something Razzaq Dawood should remember well since he was, at least in the early days, commerce minister back then as well. The GSP-Plus deal is of course one of the finest accomplishments of the Pakistani state, but it is clear that it has so far failed to do the kind of magic to trade numbers that we were initially expecting. The government is advised to give the matter of trade its most urgent attention. Many old deals might not be able to be revived as the world opens up after the lockdown, so there will be the opportunity of grabbing fresh markets. And it seems countries that are quickest off the mark stand to gain the most. *