Islamabad is scheduled to abolish its negative list of tradable goods by the end of 2012 but according to the foreign office, Pakistan is still going through the internal process of granting the status of MFN to the neighboring country.
On Thursday, when spokesperson of foreign ministry was asked about the MFN status he did not give exact timeline.
"As far as the MFN status is concerned, the government has already decided to grant this status to India.
"In fact, we had initiated the process and currently we are going through some internal processes and, hopefully, these will be completed soon", said foreign office spokesperson Moazzam Khan.
Under the agreement Pakistan is scheduled to abolish its negative list of tradable goods before the start of 2013.
The list contains 1,209 items that cannot be imported from India.
New Delhi has agreed to implement its decision by December 31, 2012 that will eventually allow Islamabad to move ahead with granting it MFN status.
Islamabad's reluctance to give specific timeframe on MFN is reportedly due to the strong resistance by various lobbies and right wing groups.
At the same the government's decision in principle to grant MFN status is also conditional to India's willingness to reduce its Pakistan specific-sensitive list by 30 per cent maintained under the South Asian Free Trade Area agreement.
The granting of MFN status to India is not expected in time, as it is to be granted by the cabinet.
After vetting of the proposal by the Law Ministry the Commerce Ministry will notify the MFN status to India.
Since, next possible cabinet meeting will be held on January 2, 2013, so the issue of granting MFN status to India in not on the agenda.
Some experts are also of the view that due to the resistance from the lobbies, the government would not be able to announce any such thing before the general elections in Pakistan to avoid strong criticism.
Iftikhar A Malik, SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Vice President said, "It is a well-known
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