Sarhad chamber chief wants work on Azakhel dry port completed

PESHAWAR: Chairman Standing Committee of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) for Railways and Dry Port Ziaul Haq Sarhadi has said the completion of development work on the Azakhel dry port in Nowshera would help restore trade activities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and boost declining trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In a statement on Monday, he said the delay in completing the new dry port had severely affected business activities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He said the Peshawar dry port was established as a temporary arrangement that lacked facilities.

Sarhadi said that Peshawar dry port was established in 1986 and was being run as a temporary facility and could not be upgraded even after 32 years.

He said successive governments had established three dry ports each in other cities but Khyber Pakhtunkhwa could not get proper dry port.

Sarhadi said that owing to lack of facilities at the Peshawar dry port, the first government of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) in 1990 had decided to establish a dry port in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

He said that the then chief minister Sardar Mahtab Ahmad Khan (1997-99) had allocated Rs20 million for the Peshawar Dry Port Trust for the facility.

Sarhadi said the Peshawar Railways division had provided over 60 acres of land for the setting the dry port near Pirpiai railways station in Nowshera and development work on the land was started but successive governments did not take any interest in the completion of work on the facility.

Sarhadi said the Afghan traders of Afghanistan Pakistan Trade Transit had shifted trade to Chabahar and Bandar Abbas ports in Iran due to lack of required facilities at the Peshawar dry port and increase in transport fares for transporting goods from Pakistan’s Karachi port to Afghanistan.

He said that as a result 70 percent of trade had been shifted from Karachi to Iranian ports which had resulted in declining of trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Pakistan Railways was affected the most from this shifting of trade to Iran.

Sarhadi, who is also director of Pak-Afghan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry and vice-president of All Pakistan Customs Agents, said that as a result 370 customs agents and 10,000 other people associated with Afghanistan Pakistan Trade Transit had lost jobs.

He said these people could get their jobs back if the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) declared the Azakhel dry port as a customs station and made it functional at the earliest.

Sarhadi also called for removing bottlenecks in the Afghanistan Pakistan Trade Transit to boost bilateral trade and put an end to the Indian dominance of Afghan markets.