Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has shown great concerns over the new Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA) as it will cause devastating effects on the roads infrastructure of Pakistan and called upon the government to take all chambers & other stakeholders of the country on board before finalizing it.

Mr.Zahid Maqbool, President, ICCI said that Afghan containers and trucks usually carry very heavy loads and allowing them direct access to Wagah border will lead to the destruction of Pakistan’s roads infrastructure as our roads and motorways are not sustainable for such transport.

He said Afghan transit trade has already badly damaged our local industry as it has flooded our markets with smuggled goods while the new ATTA is feared to unleash a new wave of smuggling of Indian goods in Pakistan.

He said many items are imported under transit trade which don’t have much need in Afghanistan and ultimately they land in Pakistani markets. Citing an example, he said roughly 0.2 million tons edible oil is transported to Afghanistan on monthly basis, which is more than its actual requirement and all this is then smuggled back to Pakistan.

Mr.Zahid Maqbool said that Afghan government has imposed 18 per cent custom duty on Pakistani products besides erecting many non-tariff barriers to discourage Pakistani exports. Contrary to this, Afghanistan has extended maximum favor to Indian goods by lowering the custom duty at zero per cent besides giving 50 per cent concessions to the freight charges for all the Indian exports reaching the Chahbahar seaport.

He said Pakistan should ask Afghanistan for extension of similar concessions to its exports. He said India doesn’t allow Nepal and Bhutan to import any item that is produced in India just to protect its industry. If similar conditions are applied in case of ATTA, there would be no problem for Pakistan, he added.

ICCI President demanded that concrete steps should be taken to discourage smuggling from Afghanistan including linking the existing Afghan imports with LCs and bank guarantee, compulsory licensing for Afghan imports, placing quantitative restrictions on them, maintaining increased sensitive list of items and equalization of customs tariff on items imported by Afghan importers under the transit facility.