PESHAWAR, May 20: The low-priced items manufactured in Punjab are fast capturing the consumer markets of Afghanistan due to their higher competitive value against the goods produced in NWFP.

“The Frontier province’s trade and industrial sectors are fast losing the business opportunities the post September 11 situation brought for them in the war-torn country,” said the president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) Malick Zahid Hussain.

The Afghan businessmen carrying out business activities in Peshawar for years have now started doing direct business with the Punjab business houses, apparently, due to the greater profit margin in comparison with the comparatively high-priced goods manufactured in NWFP, said Hussain.

According to him, even the goods manufactured in NWFP find it difficult to compete with goods imported from Punjab in view of the price differential.

As a result of unfavourable trade and industrial climate in NWFP, out of the total 2,100 industrial units set up in the province only 350 are operational rendering the local consumer markets to highly rely on goods manufactured in other provinces.

“About 99 per cent of the total goods consumed in NWFP are imported from Punjab due to their higher competitive value they enjoy due to low prices,” said Hussain.

Apart from locational disadvantage to the NWFP-based industrial units, non-availability of skilled labour, greater transportation charges escalate the cost of production making it difficult for the items manufactured in NWFP to compete with goods imported from Punjab.

Nauman Wazir, a Peshawar-based industrialist, said that NWFP industrialists purchased furnace oil at the rate of Rs14,000 per ton against Rs13,000 price charged to the industrialists of Punjab and Sindh.

“NWFP industrialists pay greater charges only because of government’s policy of deregulating furnace oil and petroleum sectors,” said Nauman adding that “in such a situation when we buy furnace oil at higher rates the government should also deregulate the electricity sector giving some respite to the power consumers of NWFP”.

The SCCI president said the federal government should take note of the situation and initiate appropriate measures to help NWFP’s trade and industry to take their due share in the Afghan markets.

“The Frontier province faced the brunt of the over 20 years long Afghan war by absorbing millions of Afghan refugees and deteriorated law and order situation as a result of bomb blasts during all these years, hence, it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that the NWFP should have larger piece of the cake,” said Hussain.

Peshawar, he said, was fast losing its historical and geographic value of having been a gate way to Central Asia.

Under the prevailing circumstances when there were arising greater business opportunities in Afghanistan the businessmen from Punjab were getting maximum benefit of the situation being enjoying the higher competitive value of their products, he said.

To help the NWFP industrial and trade circles making it possible for them to have substantial share in the Afghan markets, the federal government should announce special incentive package to infuse new life in the NWFP industrial sector, he said.

“We have been blamed, time and again, for misusing the incentive package announced for the Gadoonamazai Industrial Estate but no body thinks that the incentive package was not meant only for the NWFP rather it facilitated the investors from across the country and it were the industrialists from Punjab and Sindh who blatantly misused that facility,” he said.