1. Emerging Issues in India–Pakistan Trade: An Introduction

Building upon the themes covered in our previous book “India–Pakistan Trade: Strengthening Economic Relations” (Springer 2014), the present book compiles a new set of studies that delve into the unfinished India–Pakistan Trade normalization agenda while discussing the steps that must be undertaken for taking the bilateral engagement forward. The unfinished agenda largely includes impediments such as the negative list and sensitive list of items which continue to restrict export of goods from India to Pakistan; lack of land borders and seamless cross-border transport services that restrict realization of trade potential; informational barriers to India–Pakistan trade and negative reporting in media that hamper traders’ perceptions; and the continued incidence of informal trade resulting out of inadequacies in formal trade relations. Understanding these issues is important as it will determine the likely impact of the trade normalization process and play a huge role in helping realize the untapped trade potential between India and Pakistan. The book also includes the second round of India–Pakistan trade perception survey which identifies impediments to India–Pakistan bilateral trade and gauges the change in traders’ perceptions over the two rounds of survey, the first of which was published in 2014.