sustainable development is recognised as key area of concern by the Marrakesh Agreement and Doha Development Agenda.
Dr Shah is a fellow of LEAD International - a global sustainable development think tank. He has also served on the Board of Governors of LEAD Pakistan. He is Watson Environment Fellow from global programme of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Brown University Rhode Island, USA. He also holds Sustainability Challenge Foundation Fellowship in Netherlands specialising in negotiation skills for sustainable development.
The ambassador holds Fleishman Civil Society Fellowship from Duke University North Carolina, specialising in role of civil society in Global Governance.
A few weeks back, in a major development, the European Union (EU) withdrew the crippling Anti-Dumping Duty on Pakistan’s products of PET (Polyethylene terephthalate, a chemical used in making bottles for mineral water and beverages), imposed five years ago, due to aggressive ‘trade diplomacy’ of Pakistan.
The EU formally notified the WTO where Pakistan had filed a case of unfair trade practices in March this year, against the 28-country European economic giant.
The withdrawal was billed as a big economic diplomacy success of the trade experts of the Pakistan government. The unfair trade protection measure imposed by the EU in 2010 caused economic loss of approximately 300 million Euros to Pakistan’s nascent chemical industry in last five years as per conservative estimates by the commerce ministry.
PET popularly also called Resin is bottle grade polyester chip, which is used in production of disposable PET bottles for mineral water and beverages.
A consortium of European manufacturers Plastic Europe had lodged a complaint with the EU secretariat at Brussels in 2009 for initiation of anti-dumping investigation against imports of PET Resin from Pakistan, which they believed were causing harm to sales and prices of their production in European markets.
GATRON, Karachi, and Novatex, Karachi were two leading Pakistani companies exporting this non-traditional product to Europe. During the year when this trade restricting duty was imposed, exports of PET Resin to Europe had touched the figure of $70 million, which was expected to go to $90 million in the next year at that time more than 80 per cent of Pakistani PET was exported to EU member countries.
Immediate negative impact of levy of this 35.39 Euro per ton anti-dumping duty on Pakistani PET was that the country lost $90 million share in its exports of this non-traditional product because Pakistani producers could not compete against world scale producers due to heavy import duty by EU.