Honour the trade agreement, said the Ministry of Commerce to Afghan traders who decided to boycott Karachi port. A report by Esmatullah Mayar.
Honour the trade agreement, said the Ministry of Commerce to Afghan traders who decided to boycott Karachi port. A report by Esmatullah Mayar.The Ministry of Commerce, which has started implementing the trade agreement with Pakistan, has made bank guarantees and insurance mandatory for Pakistani trucks either traveling to Afghanistan or transiting through the country to destinations in Central Asia.
Commerce Ministry spokesman Wahidullah Ghazi Khail said the Ministry of Finance would execute the decision through customs offices at border checkpoints. The government was enforcing what was already agreed upon under APTA (the 2011 Afghanistan-Pakistan Trade Agreement), he insisted.
But Khan Jan Alokozai, deputy chairman of Afghanistan’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, claimed the bilateral trade pact was one-sided and favoured Pakistan more than Afghanistan.
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry has requested Afghan traders to boycott the port of Karachi because of the Pakistan government’s decision to impose a penalty of 100 USD per day as demurrage (the penalty on the ship for staying beyond its scheduled time of departure) on the hundreds of containers that are blocking the congested port.
Alokozai urged the government to take retaliatory measures. Pakistani trucks should not have the right to transit through the Afghan border checkpoints of Torkham and Wesh, said Alokozai. That would jeopardise Pakistan’s agreement for instance with Tajikistan to supply 30,000 tonnes of sugar overland through Afghanistan, he added.
Alokozai said Pakistan creates innumerable problems for Afghan traders. Goods are even stolen along the way with the connivance of local authorities. According to him, the security issue has often been raised with Pakistani officials but despite many promises nothing has changed on the ground.
Single strategy
Ehsanullah Kamawal, director of Nangarhar customs, told Killid over the phone that trucks from Pakistan were not being stopped at the Torkham border. That decision has to be taken by the Ministry of Transport, he clarified.
According to him, delays in Karachi port are also the result of an ongoing strike by truck drivers. “The protest has affected the loading and transport of goods to Afghanistan,” he said.
However, traders are blaming the financially ruinous long delays on Pakistani authorities. On Dec 11 last year, 30,000 containers for Afghanistan were stopped. Traders are forced to pay a daily demurrage charge.
Also, the delay will affect marketing, complained trader Ahmad Shah whose containers have been held up for the past 40 days. The goods were for the winter in Afghanistan, he said. With January drawing to a close, he lamented they would be unusable.
Trader Doost Mohammad said he has just returned from an unproductive trip to Karachi to get his containers released. “Thousands of containers have been stopped at Karachi port,” he said.
Wahid Ahmadzai, the head of Ahmadzai Hashemi Company, said demurrage has “swallowed” up all his profits.
Pakistani authorities have reportedly stopped the unloading of containers because Afghanistan has failed to share details of goods transiting from Pakistan. The exchange of documents was made mandatory under APTA. A trader who did not want to be identified said: “The only reason the Pakistani government has given is that the Afghan government has not made good its promise to return documents of goods that have reached Afghanistan.”
Economist Dr Faiz Mohammad Zaland said he was not surprised that Pakistan has once again used transit and trade to get even with the Afghan government. He believed “the boycott would force Pakistan to review its policy.”
Zia Zia, expert in economic affairs, told Killid traders, government officials and experts should hammer out a single strategy to counter Pakistan.
