As secretary-level talks with Pakistan entered the second and final round yesterday, Indian Commerce Secretary GK Pillai said Pakistan has been asked to come out with a list of 20 items that might be facing NTBs owing to infrastructure bottlenecks.

Faced with high domestic price, India wants to import cement from Pakistan but shipment is delayed due to quality certification followed by the Bureau of Indian Standards.

The demand for cement in India has risen sharply in view of a construction boom, and prices of the product also went up in the last one year.

Pakistan is keen to export its surplus cement to India and along with Bangladesh, China and Indonesia are among the countries from where cement is expected to be imported to bring down domestic prices.

Pillai said certification process for cement would be put on a fast track and India does not adopt any country-specific conditionality and the obstacles may be due to infrastructure problems.

He said the two countries should include more products in the bilateral trade basket. For instance, Pakistan can export cement to India, while it would be commercially beneficial if Pakistan, the world's third largest consumer of tea, could buy tea from India, which is the world's largest producer of the commodity.

"If tea is traded across the border through land route, the transaction cost would come down creating economic advantages for both the countries", Pillai pointed out.

He also called upon Pakistan to operationalise South Asian Free Trade Area with India. Pakistan continues to pursue a system of positive list under which it gives access to some goods from India.

Bilateral trade between India and Pakistan is estimated to touch $10 billion by the year 2010.