The two-day special meeting of commerce secretaries of the Saarc countries ended here on Wednesday without clinching an agreement to finalise the draft of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (Safta). It has now been decided that the contentious issues would be forwarded to the Saarc foreign ministers meeting which would be held here on January 2 ahead of the regional summit, sources said.The commerce secretaries made ‘‘reasonable progress’’ on the draft agreement of Safta but failed to clinch agreement on it, they said. The Indian delegation at the conference was headed by commerce secretary, Dipak Chaterjee. ‘‘There are still many differences among the member states in the way of evolving consensus on the trade free agreement’’, officials said.The meeting failed to finalise the deal as Bangladesh opposed many issues pertaining to anti-dumping, quota safeguards, concessions and the time-frame in the draft agreement. Prior to this, six meetings of the committee of experts at the level of joint secretaries were held in Kathmandu. Since they eluded a consensus, it was referred to the two-day meet of the commerce secretaries which too did not reach any agreement. The issues would now be referred to the standing committee meeting of the Saarc to be attended by the foreign secretaries of all the seven Saarc countries to be held here on December 31 and January 1. (PTI)
