The duty on Pakistani products, mainly textiles will be slashed by 50 per cent (from 10 to 5 per cent), by Australia. This is in response to rigorous efforts of the current government, especially the Commerce Ministry. Engineer Khurram Dastgir Khan, Commerce Minister disclosed this recently after a meeting with the Australian High Commissioner. Khan said the textile, clothing and footwear industry of Pakistan will be a beneficiary of reduced duty by the Australian Government. Duty has been slashed on 226 tariff lines out of which only eight are non-textile products and the remaining 218 are related to the textile sector, and 63 are home textiles.

The minister also stated that the Commerce Ministry would be chalking out a plan that is aimed at facilitating the Pakistani textile sector entrepreneurs with Australian buyers. Besides, reviewing the current state of bilateral trade relationship, an Australian trade mission would be visiting the country in October 2015. The Commerce Ministry gets a lot of support from Australia, especially through the World Bank on regional connectively issues. Khan added that they have requested Australia to also include Iran in the regional connectivity agenda and Australia was positive about it.