EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU trade commissioner Karel de Gucht on Thursday (7 October) announced a series of trade concessions to help Pakistan combat the effects of its devastating August floods.
Under the preferential terms, first to be agreed by the WTO and then by member states and the EU parliament, some 75 goods would be freed of import tariffs.
Accounting for 27 percent of Pakistan's exports to the bloc, the bulk of the products are textiles reflecting Pakistan's domestic strengths. Others products that are to be tariff-free for the three year period are industrial ethanol, some footwear and some leather goods.
The measures are expected to boost EU imports from Pakistan by around €100 million a year. They come on top of the €300 million in humanitarian aid already pledged by the EU late summer.
Mr de Gucht called it a "very courageous proposal" that will be of "considerable help" to the Pakistani economy. He added that it was a "fair" outcome with Pakistan having originally indicated it wanted a wider range of products to be tariff-free.
Pakistan is still struggling to fight the effects of the heavy monsoon rains in July and August. The rising waters left around 2000 dead and, according to UN figures, made around 21 million homeless.
Despite it being considered to have been the world's greatest natural disaster, the aid response was relatively slow, a fact seen as aggravated by the remoteness of some of the areas affected as well as the slow build up to the crisis.
The EU's concessions to the country were themselves part of a carefully orchestrated compromise. European textile manufacturers, predominantly based in Italy, Spain and Portugal, argued ahead of Thursday's announcements that the reduced import tariffs for Pakistani textiles would result in large job losses in the European sector.
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