After completing all procedures for entry into force, China and Pakistan have exchanged diplomatic notes on the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Trade in Services. The Agreement will come into effect on October 10, this year. The FTA on Trade in Services was signed by Pakistan and China during the President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to Wuhan in February.

The diplomatic notes were exchanged by Secretary Commerce Suleman Ghani and Chinese Assistant Commerce Minister Wang Chao, the diplomatic sources told APP on Saturday. Secretary Suleman Ghani and Wang Chao co-chaired the opening ceremony of the first meeting of the Trade Commission. They expressed full satisfaction on successful implementation of FTA, which had been operative since July 2007. Pakistan's Ambassador to China, Masood Khan, also attended the meeting.

Senior Joint Secretary Shahid Bashir and Deputy Director General Zhu Houng addressed the technical issues in defining FTA's regime, which covers goods, investment and services. The two sides also tried to address issues to refine procedures for visa facilitation and dissemination of information.

Both sides expressed satisfaction that the international financial crisis, had not affected Pakistan-China trade which, stood at 6.9 billion dollar in 2008. Pakistani and Chinese officials said to get full advantage of FTAs all out efforts would be made to explore investment in the manufacturing sectors in Pakistan with buy-back arrangement.