KABUL: Afghanistan’s trade with Pakistan has nosedived since the beginning of the year, the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Investment said on Thursday, amid increasing imports from Iran.
Pakistan has been Afghanistan’s main access route to international markets. But with tensions between the neighbors increasing since 2021 — when the Taliban took over the administration in Kabul and with several regime changes in Islamabad as well — the volume of trade has dropped sharply.
“Our exports and transit trade with Pakistan have been decreasing every day. Since the Islamic Emirate (the Taliban) took power, increasing restrictions have been put on our transit due to the political and security issues between the two countries,” Khan Jan Alokozai, deputy head of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Investment, told Arab News.
“Our exports also faced several challenges, slowly declining trade with Pakistan. We had around $2 billion in annual trade with Pakistan, which will be as low as $500 million this year.”
The drop in the volume of trade was also significant as hundreds of Afghan products were barred from entering Pakistani territory.
“(About) 200-300 items were put on the negative list of the Afghan transit trade, stopping all from being exported,” Alokozai said.
“Our trade with Pakistan has decreased by 60 percent while our transit (trade) has seen an 80 percent decline.”
While Afghanistan’s relations with its eastern neighbor were deteriorating, they have seen improvement with others — Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran — which was also reflected in trade activity.
Iran, Alokozai said, was increasingly taking over Pakistan’s role in the region, especially for imports.
“We tried a lot to convince the government of Pakistan but border closure and transit challenges such as high taxes led to a significant decline in trade with Pakistan.”
“On the other hand, our trade relations with Iran and Central Asia are improving. Last year, we had around $2 billion imports from Iran and our transit trade is mainly through Chabahar and Bandar Abbas ports in Iran,” he said.
In terms of cost and time, Pakistani ports including Qasim, Gawadar and Karachi were still more viable options for Afghan traders, especially those in the east.
Businesspeople trading in grocery products, who depend on the Torkham crossing connecting Nangarhar province with Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are hopeful that political issues would still be fixed between their government and its Pakistani counterpart.
“When trucks full of fresh vegetables and fruits are stopped for days in Torkham, most of them get rotten, causing great loss for businesses,” Ismail Niazi, a shopkeeper in Jalalabad, told Arab News.
“I hope the current government can resolve issues with Pakistan and support Afghan businessmen.”
