Indian foreign secratary assured yesterday that Bangladesh will get duty free access in Indian Market by december of this year. But we didn't find any assurance from him about the sensitive list. I think DFQF access will be least beneficial for LDCs if India and Pakistan will put the major exporting items of LDCs into sensitive basket.So as special and differential treatment there should be a condition in SAFTA provision like that Developing countries can not put a specific number of top exporting items(50% of top ten,or twenty,.. items) of LDCs into their sensitive list. Then DFQF access will be welfare enhancing.

I think all the member countries of South Asia are now aware that long sensitive list can make any trade agreement redundant. Big nations have long been fooling LDCs by including a long sensitive list. However for their own benefit India and Pakistan should provide real DFQF entry of goods from LDCs. I think it has to be make mandatory to provide explanation for keeping a sector in the sensitive list. We also have to give attention to free entry of services like cross border movement of natural persons, telecom facilities etc.

If the south Asian developing countries,i.e., India, provide DFQF market access to the LDCs of this region but maintain a long list for imports the effect of that provision is ambiguous. This is because the DCs will maintain this list only for the sake of their benefits. Therefore, it is important explore its impact on the LDCs. The LDCs may gain or not from this type of policy by the DCs depending on the nature and composition of their export baskets. If India, for an instance, includes any product(s) that Bangladesh usually exports to India in its (India’s) negative list of imports then that type of DFQF market access to Bangladesh will not lead Bangladesh to gain something. Therefore, the DFQF market access by south Asian DCs to LDCs in this region with this characteristic may fail to work effectively. On the contrary, if the negative lists of imports do not include any product that usually export LDCs to DCs then there is the possibility that the LDCs will gain from that DFQF market access to the LDCs. However, it is obvious that if the DCs maintain the long negative lists all of the LDCs can not be benefited from that.