India, Pakistan lukewarm about SAARC MVA

A revived initiative to sign motor vehicle agreement (MVA) among South Asian countries has been postponed due to lack of concurrence from India and Pakistan, officials said.
The South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) secretariat through an email informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in this regard on Tuesday.
"India and Pakistan requested the SAARC Secretariat to postpone the meeting of the transport ministers of member-countries, but did not give any reason," said an official preferring not to be named.
He said the Secretariat, however, received concurrence from five other members including Bangladesh.
The SAARC Secretariat took the move to sign the MVA after a meeting of transport ministers of member-countries on February 16. It sought consent from all member-countries in this regard last month.
The first move to sign the SAARC MVA was taken during the last SAARC summit held in Nepal in November 2014.
Though at that time Pakistan and Sri Lanka showed reservation in signing the MVA on the ground of lack of readiness, this time India showed less interest.
Sources said during the 18th SAARC summit, heads of eight South Asian governments directed the Secretariat to hold transport minister-level meeting to sign the MVA and place it to the next summit to be held in November this year completing formalities of cabinet approval from respective countries.
The summit has set a time-frame of three months to complete the formalities.
However, due to delay in signing SAARC MVA, four members of the group-Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) --signed another MVA on June 15 last year for seamless movement of people and cargo among the neighbouring countries.
The BBIN MVA is almost a copy of the SAARC MVA.
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