The event was jointly inaugurated on April 12, 2012 by the Indian Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, Pakistan Secretary Commerce, Chief Executive TDAP Tariq Iqbal Puri and High Commissioner of Pakistan to India Shahid Malik.

Dr Shaikh, who is heading a team of top Pakistani economic managers to the annual spring IMF-World Bank meetings, said “although the 4 percent growth rate is below Pakistan’s potential, it is the best” in recent years.

Jointly organised by the Indian and Pakistani, Lifestyle Pakistan will be held at the Pragati Maidan exhibition grounds. Apart from the exhibition, four fashion shows by Pakistan`s textile and design houses will be featured, a statement said.

Federal Information Minister Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, who inaugurated the exhibition, said such events would help revive the construction industry, which is the mother of allied industries and plays a vital role in economic revival.

Earlier, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Dr Nadeemul Haque visited the fair and met domestic and international exhibitors. He said the Planning Commission also recommended revival of construction activities in its growth strategy.

Representatives of foreign participants also held networking meetings with the Planning Commission deputy chairman.

The three-day fair is featuring over 100 exhibitors, ranging from major global suppliers to regional agents and distributors of building and construction material.

The exhibition provides an unrivalled platform for architects, consultants, interior designers, builders, landscapers, developers, contractors, machinery and equipment manufacturers and suppliers from the public and private sectors to network, source and specify latest building and construction products and services.

Event organiser Fakt Exhibitions CEO Saleem Khan Tanoli said “we take the initiative with the principal objective of building bridges between Pakistan and foreign countries by promoting commerce, trade and business through corporate exhibitions and conferences.”

Realising the importance of trade and commerce among different industrial sectors, the event manager has planned to organise nine events including five new ones in 2012.

“Pakistan has potential to export finished plastic goods to the international markets subject to supportive government policies,” he said talking to media on the first day of the 8th International Plastic Printing and Packaging Industry & International Food Equipment & Technology (3P) Exhibition that opened at Expo Centre Lahore.

“Both governments are determined to ensure normalisation of trade and economic relations and the Indian exhibition is part of the efforts being put in this direction,” Fahim asserted.

The government has so far failed to release a Rs 11.2 billion bailout package it committed in 2010. The only ray of hope is the private-public partnership initiative, which has been taken at the right time to rescue the largest public-sector department of the country.

First business train which is joint venture of Pakistan Railway and a private company left Lahore Railway station 5 minutes before schedule and reached Karachi Cantt station 15 minutes late Saturday.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Wednesday approved the much-delayed package covering 75 items at a meeting of its Council for Trade in Goods (CTG) in Geneva. The deal was scheduled to come into effect in January last year, but it was delayed after countries such as Argentina, Brazil, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia raised objections. The tariff changes will enter into force after formal approval by the WTO General Council in March.

Under the package, the total export value of the 75 tariff lines is estimated at US$1.03 billion and the average tariff on these products is around 8.86%, or less than a quarter of the $3.80 billion value of the country’s total global exports.

Major producers of yarn and cloth will be the main beneficiaries of the package, but critics say Pakistan’s textile exporters will not be able to benefit from the concessions unless the government takes serious measures to resolve a chronic energy shortage that holds back the textile processing industry.

Recurring power blackouts are costing the country dear, as businesses involved in value-added textile exports lose out to South Asian rivals including India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh, Brazil and India dropped their objections recently dropped their objections to the EU tariff package after it was amended to use tariff rate quotas (TRQs) on 20 products rather than full liberalization.

“It was a long drawn-out exercise, and something of a success for diplomacy,” Reuters reported Pakistan’s ambassador to the WTO, Shahid Bashir, as saying. “The tariff rate quotas will be set at 20% above the average of exports in 2008, 2009 and 2010. So we have at least a 25% margin over and above our 2011 exports. It gives us some flexibility.”

The EU trade package could generate $100 million to $300 million of additional textile export earnings a year, the UK’s Financial Times reported Suleman Maniya, an analyst at IGI Securities in Karachi as saying. Pakistan exported about $13 billion of textile products last year. “It’s not a game-changer, but it’s still a welcome boost,” he said.

A WTO waiver was originally sought by the EU for unilateral trade concessions on 75 products for a period of three years to help Pakistan recover from the devastation of the 2010 floods. The selected products represent almost 900 million euros (US$1.2 billion) worth of Pakistani exports to the EU, accounting for about 27% of the EU imports from Pakistan, which totaled 3.3 billion euros in 2010.

The EU is Pakistan’s most important trading partner, receiving 27.4% of the country’s exports and providing 17% of its total imports. Pakistan’s exports to the EU are mainly composed of textiles and clothing products, which account for over 60%, followed by leather products, which account for 13%. Imports from the EU mainly comprise finished products like mechanical and electrical machinery, which account for over 35%, and chemical and pharmaceuticals, at 10%.

Power and gas cuts have taken a heavy toll of the textile industry – which accounts for more than half of the country’s exports. They prevent Pakistani exporters of value-added textiles shipping orders on time and cause huge production losses to the entire textile chain, from spinning to finished goods, particularly in Punjab province.

“The power and gas cuts for the textile processing industry in Punjab have made us uncompetitive not only in the region but also within our country”, Dawn reported Rana Arif Tauseef, chairman of the Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) in Faisalabad, as saying. “The energy shortages in Punjab are going to cut our exports this year by at least $4 billion to $5 billion. The industry faced gas cuts for six months during 2011″.

The trade package is expected to improve EU relations with Pakistan at a time when the country’s ties with the US are at their lowest ebb following the November 26 air attack by North Atlantic Treaty Organization on a Pakistani post near the Afghanistan border that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

EU trade preferences for Pakistani textile makers could not be approved during a meeting of trade diplomats in Geneva on November 7 after Bangladesh blocked the move. India had announced support for the waiver package following a meeting of Commerce Ministers of the two countries in September in New Delhi.

Bangladesh argued that its textile exports to the EU would be hurt in particular if tariffs were reduced for Pakistan on eight of the 75 proposed items. Bangladesh textile-sector exports to the EU have reached $16 billion from merely $2 billion a few years back, while Pakistan has peaked at a mere $1.5 billion in a total market worth $80 billion.

Approval of all WTO member counties is essential for approval of any proposal for a tariff waiver, according to WTO regulations.

The EU trade package for Pakistan also faced tough resistance from within the EU bloc, notably from southern states including Portugal, France and Italy with strong textile industries.