India today announced that it was taking steps to reduce the “sensitive lists” of items for free trade as it pitched for early ratification of a SAARC pact in Trade in Services and finalisation of an agreement on Promotion and Protection of Investments to give a fillip to intra-regional commerce.
Addressing a conference of SAARC Council of Ministers here, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna regretted that implementation of the agreed decisions was taking time and needed to be speeded up.
“I am sure my colleagues will agree that we face a continuing challenge to implement our agreed decisions. We need to move faster in executing the plans of action,” he told the conference being attended by Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka. Pakistan is being represented by Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir.
