Indo-Pak rivalry costing $35b trade deficit: WB

NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan’s bitter rivalry is costing them $35 billion worth of annual trade, the World Bank said in a report. Someone might want to tell the two countries’ leaders both of whom want to boost trade to battle widespread poverty. The World Bank called for South Asia, the world’s least economically-integrated region, to start cooperating instead of feuding. Trade between India and Pakistan, the region’s two largest economies, could jump to $37 billion from $2 billion if New Delhi and Islamabad tore down artificial barriers, the bank’s last week report found. South Asian nations lose billions because they barely trade with each other.

But the breakdown last week of the most recent attempt by the two nuclear-armed nations to mend ties showed, once again, why South Asia with 33 percent of the world’s poor and 40 per cent of the world’s stunted children is unlikely to realize those gains.