Ministry of Industry and Trade says exports are rising

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KABUL (SW) – The Ministry of Industry and Trade has claimed that there has been 85% increase in Afghanistan’s exports this past year touching the figure of $ 1.8 billion dollars.

Abdulsalam Javad Akhundzada, the spokesman of this ministry, told Salam Watandar that the exports this year have reached the value of 1.8 billion dollars.

“Considering the support for the private sector and bringing facilities to our business and merchants, as well as the all-round support by the Ministry of Industry and Trade to domestic industries, we were able to achieve good results compared to last year. Last year, our exports reached a total of 850 million”, he said.

He added that main export items this year were agricultural products, mineral products and other products.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance has said that the customs revenue of coal in the past year has reached 12.1 billion afghanis.

Commenting on this, Bhair Zeland, a university professor, emphasizing on prioritizing domestic needs, said that domestic resources should not be exported indiscriminately.

“In exports, it does not mean that we sell our internal resources that we need and make ourselves needy. We should satisfy domestic needs and supply to other markets. In the sense of finding an international market, both domestic demand will be satisfied and we will sell it at a high price so that the source of income for the government and the people and taxes for the government will increase”, he said.

However, Amina Hashemi, an expert on economic issues, said that due to the lack of control over exports and resources, the increase in exports has not had any effect on reducing poverty. “Exports were not controlled at all. It is true that they gave us the statistics of more than one billion dollars. But unfortunately, this had a minimal effect of 40 to 50 percent on the economy of the Afghan people. But we see that poverty is increasing day by day. If there was proper control over the resources, surely poverty could be reduced to some extent.”

ENDS

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