RECORDER REPORT

LAHORE: Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) and SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) Friday unanimously called for promotion of durable bilateral cooperation between two Muslims neighbouring countries Afghanistan and Pakistan to further cement brotherly bonds besides strengthening of mutual trade relations resulting prosperity and long lasting peace in the region.

President FPCCI Eng Daroo Khan Achakzai and Senior Vice President SAARC Chamber Iftikhar Ali Malik expressed these views while interaction with visiting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and members of high level trade delegates from Afghanistan at a luncheon hosted in his honour by Governor Punjab Chaudurary Muhammad Sarwar at the Governor House.

Daroo Khan urged top leadership of Afghanistan and Pakistan to remove non-tariff-barriers (NTBs) and other obstacles to boost bilateral trade besides exploration of new joint business avenues in various sectors and frequent exchange of trade delegations to enhance business activity between both the countries.

He said Pak private sector always attached great importance to Afghan traders and all the time ready to promote trade with them through legal framework and lawful channels. He also stressed the urgent need for barter trade. He further reaffirmed for solid commitment to work together to broaden and deepen bilateral trade, streamline transit trade and fortify efforts for better connectivity. He said if proposed major energy connectivity projects such as the CASA 1000 power high voltage transmission line and the TAPA gas pipeline after execution will bring long term economic benefits to either country.

Daroo Khan further suggested to setup customs union between Pakistan and Afghanistan to remove complications of tax mechanism within transit trade agreement. “If customs union is formed between both countries, this will facilitate the smooth and frictionless transportation of commodities across the borders and the subsidiary issues related with the collection mechanism, tax and tariff will be automatically removed,” he added. He said smuggling is obstructing the legal trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan; therefore, this issue should be tackled through rationalizing and removing the tariff barriers.

Iftikhar Malik on this occasion said Afghanistan, and Pakistan had a long tradition of interactions and Pakistan was one of the largest trading partners of Afghanistan. Throwing light on expansion of CPEC, he said the next phase of CPEC, as part of the wider One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, would be extended to Central Asia via Afghanistan. He said:” If we look into the CPEC, it has four main components: transit and trade, infrastructure, energy cooperation, and economic integration. Afghanistan can be helpful when it comes to all these components”.

He further said Afghanistan was a natural transit corridor and most of its own infrastructure projects could be aligned with OBOR. He added there were very close people-to-people and business-to-business relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Giving suggestions to improve trade relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Malik said tariff rates should be reduced on essential commodities, non-tariff barriers lowered and trade facilitation eased to remove obstacles faced by Afghan businesses and lower the cost of transactions, adding that concessionary export refinancing facilities should be made available to Pakistani exporters for incremental flows of goods to Afghanistan.