MONITORING (SW) – Contrary to repeated official pledges and rosy promises about an increase in trade with Afghanistan through Torkham border and provision of facilities to traders, the quantum of bilateral trade has been on constant decline since 2016, reported Dawn news.
According to official figures, the quantum of bilateral trade with Afghanistan has plummeted to a mere $800 million in comparison to $1.3 billion per annum in 2015-16, thanks to a lack of interest and coordination between various government departments operating at Torkham.
Importers, exporters, custom clearing agents and transporters with whom this scribe interacted on the matter said that visits by different government dignitaries to Torkham and a series of consultative meetings proved to be an exercise in futility and a mere photo session.
“I have been attending such meetings at Torkham, Peshawar and even Islamabad since 2016 but all such occasions proved to be a mere ‘rhetoric’ as nothing concrete is done to alleviate the sufferings of traders and transporters while the trade is on the constant decline,” Haji Jabir Shinwari, patron-in-chief of All KP Exporters Association and a founding member of Khyber Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told this scribe.
He said that government had no will to promote bilateral trade with Afghanistan and solve the issues faced by traders and transporters.
He said that around 120 of the total 131 exporters had shifted their businesses outside Pakistan during the last three to four years due to the unfriendly trade policies of the government. He added that lucrative offers were made to him by some traders-friendly countries for taking out his capital from Pakistan.
Haji Jabir said that he had stopped attending official meetings regarding promotion of trade with Afghanistan via Torkham, Kharlaachi, Ghulam Khan and Chaman as those meetings had ‘dealt a blow’ to the trade rather than promoting it due to the anti-traders attitude of the government officials and relevant departments.
National Logistic Cell officials, however, said that the custom terminal would be completed by the end of current year to address the issues of parking, traffic congestion and slow goods clearance.
The newly-appointed chief collector (custom) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Fayyaz Anwar, also had during a meeting at Torkham on April 8 gave a firm assurance to all the stakeholders that concrete steps would be taken to remove hurdles to trade between the two neighbouring countries as soon as possible.
Traders and transporters at Torkham, however, said that nothing concrete had happened since then and they were still faced with delays in goods clearance while many among them were deserting the business due to lack of facilities and interest by the official quarters.
They also doubted NLC claims about completion of the custom terminal by the end of the year and said that there was still a lot to be done as the pace of work on it was not up to the mark.
ENDS
