Pakistan has made arrangements at a border crossing in Punjab for duty free imports of food from India to bring down prices in the country.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz made the announcement at a press conference here Thursday at which he also scotched rumours of his resignation that had seen the Karachi Stock Exchange tumbling 127.6 points - an erosion of Rs.110 billion ($1.8 billion) in market capitalisation.

 
"The prime minister said the government has established facilities at the Wagah border to allow the duty-free import of meat and live animals, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and garlic through the land route," The News reported Friday.

The government would ensure adequate supplies of these items throughout the country to bring down prices, Aziz added.

He also indicated efforts to streamline markets across the country to eliminate major price differentials among different cities and towns.

Aziz had May 3 chaired a meeting of the Price Control Committee that had decided to permit food imports from India after reviewing the prices of essential edible items in neighbouring countries.

The meeting decided to permit the import of about one million tonnes of meat/live animals at an expected cost of $40 million. Figures for the other commodities were not immediately available.

The decision had come two weeks after President Pervez Musharraf's April visit to India. Four decisions on the economic front, among them permitting trade through road transport, were taken after his talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The other three decisions were: creation of a Joint Economic Commission, reviving the Joint Business Council and a meeting of the petroleum ministers to carry forward proposals for trans-national gas pipeline from Iran and Central Asia.

Indian Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar was in Pakistan earlier this week to discuss the pipeline proposal.

At his meeting with Musharraf, Aiyar was told Pakistan was keen to begin work next year on the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline and that Islamabad would ensure the security of the stretch through this country.