India, Pakistan to hold talks on energy trade

India and Pakistan have agreed to set up a joint group of experts to look into the various aspects of cross border trade on power and petroleum products. The group is expected to hold its first meeting before January.

The two countries area also looking at the possibility of grid connectivity between Amritsar and Lahore to enable trade of up to 500 MW of power.

Commerce secretary Rahul Khullar and his Pakistani counterpart Zafar Mahmood announced this in their joint statement issued at the end of their talks today.

''It is expected that the group of experts will reach a final understanding on grid connectivity at this meeting,'' according to the statement.

The two sides also agreed to complete construction of all infrastructure for facilitating trade through the Attari-Wagah land route by February. Pakistan would also announce the pruned negative list of items by then.

Both sides expressed satisfaction with the overall progress being made to fully normalise the bilateral trading relationship. To take forward the decisions taken during the fifth round of talks in April 2011, the two sides have set up several bilateral groups/sub-groups. Almost all of these groups/sub-groups have met and worked on their specific designated tasks.

Both sides designated the joint secretaries in their respective ministries of commerce as chief negotiators for working on how to improve preferential trading arrangements under SAFTA.