India’s exports to Pakistan dropped 20.5 per cent in the first quarter of this fiscal. Exports to Pakistan were only 0.6 per cent of India’s outbound shipments during this period, Purchases from Pakistan, too, collapsed 93.3 per cent in the first quarter of this fiscal. This was due to India’s imposition of a 200 per cent duty on purchases from Pakistan following a withdrawal of the most favored nation (MFN) status to Pakistan in the wake of the terror attacks. India had granted the MFN status, a jargon for giving equal treatment to all trade partners under the WTO framework, to Pakistan unilaterally in 1996.

Between April 2018 and January 2019, India’s exports to Pakistan had risen 22.1 per cent from a year earlier, while imports from Pakistan inched up by 12.6 per cent. While India’s exports of cotton crashed 71.4 per cent in the April-June period of this fiscal, that of plastics dropped 24.6 per cent. Exports of organic chemicals, however, rose 8.2 per cent in the first quarter. Together these three items made up for close to a half of India’s exports to Pakistan.

On its part, Pakistan hasn’t granted the MFN status to India and continues to trade with India with a negative list of 1,209 products. This means barring those products on the list India can ship out other items to Pakistan.