October 22, 2002	Tuesday	Sha’aban 15,1423

ISLAMABAD, Oct 21: The government is likely to withdraw around eight items from negative list of Afghan Transit Trade (ATT) aiming to help in reconstruction of war-torn country of Afghanistan.

Well-placed sources told Dawn on Monday that the expected items to be withdrawn from the 24 banned items placed under the negative list of ATT were tape recorder; juicer, blender, mixer; video cassette; VCR, VCP; glass ware, dinner set; timers (capacitors) and refrigerators.

The decision was taken following the repeated demands from the Afghan government asking for the complete withdrawal of all items from the negative list.

The sources said that Ministry of Industries, Commerce and Central Board of Revenue (CBR) were actively working with the relevant stakeholders to finalize these and other items to be withdrawn from the negative list.

According to the sources, all relevant ministries were working out their recommendations on the list and final decision would be taken at a high level meeting expected to be presided over by President General Pervez Musharraf shortly.

Commenting on the decision, a senior customs official in the CBR said that these items even if withdrawn from the list would have no major impact on the production of local industries.

Elaborating further, the official said that the government has already reduced the customs duty on most of the items, which were prone to smuggling from Afghanistan.

The official further said that if agreed with Afghan government demand that all the items were removed from the negative list the major set back would be to the local productions of some major goods.

Earlier, most goods were smuggled back as they were imported free of customs duty for being cheaper to legally imported goods. However, now this margin has substantially decreased, the official added.

The government is likely to re-negotiate the entire ATT agreement signed between the two government in 1965 allowing transit facility to goods passing through their countries and both agreed not to charge any customs duty or any other tax.

According to the sources, due to the constant rise in smuggling through the porous boarder between the two countries, the government was left with no option but to ban 24 items under ATT.

The government for the first time to discourage the smuggling, banned 17 items in 1996 under ATT, which helped in reducing the ratio of smuggling of these items. Again, the government in 2000-01 further prohibited seven more items under ATT to discourage the smuggling of these items causing threat to the local production.