Peace Moves Improving Trade Between Pakistan, India

Sixteen months into a cautious peace process between India and Pakistan, trade between the two nuclear powers is still an exercise in frustration and missed opportunities. Trade is improving, too, and is on course to rise more than 150 per cent in the financial year that ends this month to about US$500 million ($680 million), but the detente is spreading all too slowly for Indian businessmen. Barriers to commerce cemented by more than half a century of hostility mean companies selling everything from wheat to tyres to Pakistan are forced into costly detours via third countries such as Afghanistan or the United Arab Emirates. “These two nations are so close and yet so far.”