Afghan vegetable importers default on payments

Have to pay millions of rupees to commission agents.

PESHAWAR: Afghan vegetable importers have defaulted on payments of millions of rupees to commission agents of Peshawar and despite assurances the matter has remain unresolved, commission agents told The Express Tribune on Thursday.

According to the commission agents at the fruit and vegetable wholesale market, situated on Inqilab Road, it is a common practice that Afghan importers purchase vegetables on credit and ship them to their country while payments are made in installments spread over several weeks and even months. In recent years, however, most of the vegetable importers have defaulted, taking millions of rupees away.

Commission agents said initially they did not take the matter seriously as such ups and downs were considered routine, but soon they discovered that in most of the cases defaults were entirely wilful.

“We started protests as soon as we discovered that Afghan buyers were wilful defaulters but no attention has been paid,” said Market President Malik Muhammad Sohni, adding hundreds of commission agents had lost their money this way.

“They have to pay us Rs2 billion which is a large sum by any means and all efforts to recover the money have failed so far,” he argued.

Last year, the matter was brought to the notice of Afghan ambassador, when he visited the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In response, he promised that Afghan traders would provide a written guarantee and would have no option but to honour it, but the matter did not move beyond the drawing board.

“The assurances given by the Afghan ambassador were white lies,” commented Sohni.

The problem arose because of a cut-throat competition among Peshawar-based commission agents, who wanted to increase trade with Afghanistan, but that left them divided.

To create unity in their ranks, the commission agents held a meeting two days ago to finalise a strategy, Sohni said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2012.