A business delegation, hea ded by Afghanistan’s Finance Minister, Omar Zakhilwal, will reach here on Tuesday for twoday long talks with the Pakistani government. According to a finance ministry official, the talks will focus on the new Pak- Afghan transit trade agreement and setting up a rail link between the two countries.
The official added that Islamabad was under extreme pressure to finalise a transit trade treaty. Such a treaty will favour both, Kabul and New Delhi. India and Afghanistan have long insisted that Pakistan open up its land route for transit trade between the two countries which do not share a border.
Pakistan and Afghanistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a new transit trade treaty in Washington in May 2009 and agreed to finalise the agreement by the end of 2009. The deadline could not be met due to stiff opposition from domestic quarters.
Although India has not been specifically mentioned in the MOU, it is widely believed that New Delhi will be the main beneficiary of such an agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan. New Delhi and Kabul are major trade partners.
So far, Pakistan has been resistant to the demand of giving Kabul land route access to New Delhi.
Bilateral trade between Islamabad and Kabul has been recorded at $ 1.5 billion. However, the volume of illegal trade between the two nations is many times more as the government has failed to keep track of transactions across the 2, 200 kilometre long, largely unmanned border. Pakistan has been worried about the negative impact of Afghanistan’s transit trade on its economy since most of goods imported for Kabul are illegally sold here.
The official has said that the government will two table two major demands. It will try and persuade Kabul to accept the option of levying duties on Afghanistan bound imports. These taxes would be collected by Islamabad on behalf of Kabul. The other option, the official added, would be to fix Afghanistan’s import quota keeping in view its domestic consumption. He said the government would pressurise Kabul to carry out a detailed study of impact of Afghanistan Transit Trade on Pakistan and same clause would be added into the final agreement.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 6th, 2010.
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