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9,000 goods containers held up for months by Pakistani officials

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As Pakistan’s trade with Afghanistan continues to decline another problem has reared its head - that of about 9,000 containers loaded with goods worth more than $400 million stuck at Pakistani ports. 

Bloomberg reported Monday that these containers have been held up for about five months. There are two reasons for this, the report stated. 

Firstly customs officials are screening all the cargo instead of the five percent they used to check before the COVID-19 outbreak and secondly because not all trucks have GPS trackers - which are mandatory to stop theft and to ensure the containers don’t go missing along Taliban controlled routes. 

However, the company tasked to install trackers refuted these claims. 

Ghulam Nayab, commercial consular at the Afghanistan consulate in Karachi told Bloomberg that “transit consignments that landed in June are still lying at Karachi port,” said Nayab.

South Asia Pakistan Terminal, the nation’s biggest and deepest container terminal, alone has a backlog of 1,600 boxes, according to Rashid Jamil, chief executive officer of SAPT, a unit of Hutchison Port Holdings.

This, according to Bloomberg, is eroding Pakistan’s trade surplus to Afghanistan even further as a sharp decline has been recorded over the past three years. 

In this time, Pakistani exports to Afghanistan have dropped more than 40 percent in the three years that ended in June, to $889 million, according to official data. 

Bilateral trade stood at $1.01 billion last fiscal year, down more than 38 percent from $1.64 billion in fiscal 2018, reported Bloomberg.

Afghanistan meanwhile has tried to push for quicker clearance of these containers and also requested that Pakistan waive the demurrage and detention charges, which range from $120 to $200 a day, according to Nayab’s letter to the Pakistani customs office.

“Traders are losing millions of dollars because of shipping and port demurrages,” Nayab said.

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Iran’s non-oil exports to Afghanistan rise by 31% this solar year

Iran’s imports from Afghanistan also rose sharply, totalling over $33 million, a 192% increase in this period

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Iran's non-oil exports to Afghanistan surged by 31% in the first half of this solar year (April to September 2024), totalling over $1.77 billion.

According to Iran’s trade association in Afghanistan, both the value and volume of non-oil exports to Afghanistan saw substantial growth. 

Statistics provided by the association indicate that nearly 560,000 tons of Iranian goods, including iron, steel, cement, eggs, and potatoes, were exported to Afghanistan during this period.

Iran’s imports from Afghanistan also rose sharply, totalling over $33 million, a 192% increase in this period. 

The primary exports to Iran included barley, corn, peanuts, and chilies.

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Private sectors of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan sign contracts worth $100 million

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Private sectors of Afghanistan and Kazakhstan have signed contracts worth $100 million during the visit of an Afghan delegation to Almaty recently, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) announced on Thursday.

The agreements include the export of more than 2,000 tons of dried fruit, the export of fresh fruit, including pomegranates, and the export of cotton, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Islamic Emirate, said on X.

Mujahid said that the Islamic Emirate delegation during its recent visit to Kazakhstan signed a "road map of cooperation between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan in the fields of trade, industry, mining, energy, logistics, agriculture, telecommunications, health, higher education and humanitarian aid.”

He said Kazakhstan also assured that it would provide more facilities for the transit of Afghan goods to China and other countries through Kazakhstan.

The allocation of an area "as a logistics center for Afghan goods" in the port of Khargos was also part of the agreement between the two sides to facilitate the unloading and loading of Afghan traders' goods.

The spokesman of the Islamic Emirate also said that Kazakhstan will participate in the construction of the Torghundi-Herat, Kandahar-Spin Boldak and Mazar-e-Sharif-Kharlachi railway projects.

Mujahid added that Kazakhstan will also participate in the establishment of a trade and transit center in Herat province, which will be used to store and finance trade and transit goods. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan has agreed to establish permanent expo centers for the sale of Afghan goods in various cities of Kazakhstan.

It is worth mentioning that the delegation of the Islamic Emirate led by Nooruddin Azizi, Acting Minister of Industry and Commerce, participated in the three-day exhibition of Afghanistan's domestic products, which was launched on October 21 in Almaty.

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce recently announced that 23 tons of pomegranates from Kandahar province were exported to Almaty through the port of Torghundi.

 

 

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China resumes direct rail trade with Afghanistan

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China resumed its direct freight rail services to Afghanistan on Thursday when a train loaded with goods left Nantong city in Jiangsu province.

The train, carrying commercial goods in 55 wagons, is heading for the northern Hairatan border in Balkh province, Yue Xiaoyong, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Special Representative for Afghanistan, said in a post on X.

Nantong is a central hub of the Belt and Road Initiative and is located north of Shanghai.

The resumption of the rail line was marked at a formal ceremony on Thursday with Yue and Bilal Karimi, the Afghan Ambassador to China, in attendance.

This comes after China recently announced plans to lift customs tariffs on Afghan exports to China by the end of this year, further strengthening trade ties between the two nations.

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