The World Trade Organization has approved a European Union waiver on duties for 75 Pakistani products in a plan aimed at helping Pakistan recover from devastating floods in 2010.

The waiver, announced Wednesday, affects many of Pakistan's most important export products, including textiles. It covers 27 percent of Pakistan's exports to the EU.

Competing textile exporters such as Bangladesh originally opposed the plan. But they dropped their objections after the European Union agreed to use tariff rate quotas on 20 products.

The WTO's General Council must ratify the waiver before it takes effect.

In 2010, massive floods in Pakistan killed 1,700 people, affected 20 million others and submerged one-fifth of the country.

Last year, monsoon rains triggered floods that killed at least 300 people and destroyed more than 1.5 million homes in Pakistan's southern Sindh province and neighboring Baluchistan province.