More relaxation sought in Pak-Afghan trade

PESHAWAR: The Pak-Afghan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry has welcomed recent amendments to several Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs) by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and called for more relaxation in trade conditions for the promotion of bilateral and regional trade.

In a statement issued here on Saturday, Senior Vice-President of the chamber, Zia-ul-Haq Sarhadi, lauded the FBR’s decision.

He hoped that the revised regulations would not only enhance bilateral trade but also reduce barriers for the trading community.

Sarhadi explained that one major amendment reinstated the option of using insurance guarantee alongside the bank guarantee for goods transported under the Afghan Transit Trade agreement. The earlier decision of October 2023 had restricted traders solely to the bank guarantees and placed a significant financial burden on them. The restoration of choice is a welcome relief for the business community, he said.

Regarding other amendments, Sarhadi said it was about the implementation of 10 percent processing fees on a few items being imported under Afghan Transit Trade.

The decision has been revised and several items have been exempted from the 10 percent processing duty, which will also have a positive impact on regional trade, he elaborated.

The third SRO pertained to the `Negative List’ comprising around 200 items out of which several have been excluded from the list, Sarhadi added.

“These are positive decisions which will prove beneficial for Pak-Afghan trade in the longer run”, he commented.

He said the earlier decisions had diverted a lot of Pak-Afghan trade to Iranian ports, including Chabahar and Bandar Abbas.

However, now, he continued, hopefully, the trading community of Afghanistan would come back to the sea ports of Pakistan.

He said the ban on imports of several items in Afghan transit trade was implemented over a plea that these items come back into our markets and affect local production.

Sarhadi insisted on making border security and vigilance stricter to plug smuggling instead of imposing a ban on the import of several items.

Sarhadi added that hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees had been repatriated to their motherland in the wake of new policy of Pakistan, resulting in an increase in the import of goods for Afghanistan under the transit trade facility.

He criticised the imposition of 0.2 percent Infrastructure Development Cess (IDC) by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on export of items to Afghanistan.

Sarhadi said the IDC had been slashed to 0.1 percent by the KP government, but the decision has badly affected Pak-Afghan trade by shifting the business to Baluchistan province, rendering thousands of KP dwellers associated with Pak-Afghan trade jobless.