WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONG/C/W/478
22 December 2003
(03-6700)
Council for Trade in Goods Original:  English
PAKISTAN'S REQUEST FOR EXTENSION OF THE TRANSITION PERIOD
UNDER THE AGREEMENT ON TRADE-RELATED INVESTMENT MEASURES
The following communication, dated 19 December 2003, has been received from the
delegation of Pakistan.
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The Council for Trade in Goods extended the transition period until 31 December 2003 for
elimination of Pakistan’s remaining TRIMs vide its decision as contained in Document No. G/L/501,
dated 9 November 2001.  During this transition period, Pakistan has made substantial progress in
elimination of its TRIMs and has so far successfully deleted 86 programmes relating to machinery and
domestic appliances.  However, we still have 16 remaining programmes for automobile industry for
which we are facing difficulties to phase them out because of our development, financial, and tradeneeds. Pakistan would, therefore, like to request further extension for three years for the maintenance
of 16 remaining programmes uptil 31 December 2006.
After considerable economic difficulties, recently Pakistan’s large scale manufacturing sector
has been showing a promising growth. In 2002-2003 it grew by 8.7 per cent.  Major contribution in
this growth is because of automobile sector which grew by 49.8 per cent.  Pakistan, therefore, feels
that the present policy should be continued for a while to sustain this high growth.
Major beneficiary of maintaining the TRIMs in the automobile sector is the vendor industry
which is providing employment to more than 115,000 persons. This is also raising taxes for the
government exchequer of more than US $450 million and contributing to a saving of US $700 million
in imports.  Also due to this policy Pakistan is entering into exports of auto parts and last year itexports were worth US $25 million.
Considering the development, financial, and trade needs, as explained above, Pakistan hopes
that the request for extension for maintenance of its Indigenization/Deletion policy for the automobile
sector will receive positive consideration by the Members and extension will be agreed until31 December 2006.
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