Business
9,000 goods containers held up for months by Pakistani officials
As Pakistan’s trade with Afghanistan continues to decline another problem has reared its head – that of about 9,000 containers loaded with goods worth more than $400 million stuck at Pakistani ports.
Bloomberg reported Monday that these containers have been held up for about five months. There are two reasons for this, the report stated.
Firstly customs officials are screening all the cargo instead of the five percent they used to check before the COVID-19 outbreak and secondly because not all trucks have GPS trackers – which are mandatory to stop theft and to ensure the containers don’t go missing along Taliban controlled routes.
However, the company tasked to install trackers refuted these claims.
Ghulam Nayab, commercial consular at the Afghanistan consulate in Karachi told Bloomberg that “transit consignments that landed in June are still lying at Karachi port,” said Nayab.
South Asia Pakistan Terminal, the nation’s biggest and deepest container terminal, alone has a backlog of 1,600 boxes, according to Rashid Jamil, chief executive officer of SAPT, a unit of Hutchison Port Holdings.
This, according to Bloomberg, is eroding Pakistan’s trade surplus to Afghanistan even further as a sharp decline has been recorded over the past three years.
In this time, Pakistani exports to Afghanistan have dropped more than 40 percent in the three years that ended in June, to $889 million, according to official data.
Bilateral trade stood at $1.01 billion last fiscal year, down more than 38 percent from $1.64 billion in fiscal 2018, reported Bloomberg.
Afghanistan meanwhile has tried to push for quicker clearance of these containers and also requested that Pakistan waive the demurrage and detention charges, which range from $120 to $200 a day, according to Nayab’s letter to the Pakistani customs office.
“Traders are losing millions of dollars because of shipping and port demurrages,” Nayab said.
Nooruddin Azizi, Acting Minister of Commerce and Industry, met with representatives from the ministries of foreign affairs, defense and interior of Malaysia, along with other senior officials, on Wednesday and called on Malaysians to invest in Afghanistan.
The visiting delegation is being led by senior diplomat Dr. Shazelina Zainul Abidin.
According to the IEA’s foreign ministry, the two sides discussed bilateral trade, holding a business communication conference to strengthen trade relations between the two countries, the trade balance between Afghanistan and Malaysia, and creating a market for Afghan products, including carpets, cotton, and minerals.
According to the ministry, at the end of the meeting, the Acting Minister emphasized the increase of investment from regional countries in Afghanistan and called on Malaysian investors to also invest in Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Interior says that Afghanistan has started exporting goods to Turkey via the Herat-Khaf railway line.
In a post on X, the ministry said: “Afghanistan’s exports to Turkey started in a calm atmosphere through the Herat-Khaf railway line.”
The ministry added that one train will run daily for a month and then two trains will run daily.
According to the ministry, the security of Khaf-Herat railway line is provided by the guards of the National Public Protection Agency.
Khaf-Herat railway project not only connects Iran and Afghanistan by rail, but also completes a 2,000-kilometer route along the east-west rail corridor from China, through Uzbekistan, to Afghanistan, to Iran, and on to Turkey and Europe.
As a landlocked country, this railway network will provide a safe route to connect with Europe via Iran’s railway network and Iran’s southern ports.
This railway line is strategic for trade between Iran and Afghanistan and will allow six million tons of goods to be sent between the two countries.
A joint expo between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan will be held in Kabul in the next four days, officials said on Sunday.
Officials of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce said that the two-day expo will be held for the purpose of expanding and strengthening trade relations between the two countries.
“This expo will be held as a follow-up of the Kazakh-Afghan international expo, which was held in the city of Astana, Kazakhstan, with the participation of a large delegation of the government and the private sector of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” Abdulsalam Javad Akhundzadeh, the spokesman of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, said.
“At this expo, domestic products from different sectors of Afghanistan and the Republic of Kazakhstan will be put on display for two days.”
According to officials, 40 large Kazakh companies, and 40 large Afghan companies will exhibit their products.
Mohammad Saber Latifi, head of the Afghanistan International Expo Center, said that fruits, minerals and commercial services will be displayed at the expo.
During the expo, various memorandums of understanding for the trade of goods are also expected to be signed by companies.
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