12 January 2004	Monday	19 Ziqa'ad 1424

ISLAMABAD, Jan 11: Pakistan and Afghanistan have vowed to further strengthen their bilateral economic relations. The two countries expressed this resolve at the third meeting of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Ministerial Commission held on Sunday in Kabul.

Shaukat Aziz, the finance minister, led the Pakistan delegation while his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani, led his side. Mr Aziz informed the Afghan team that trade between the two countries was rapidly expanding as during the first six months of 2003-04 (July-December 2003), it amounted to $360 million compared to $400 million during the full year of 2002-03.

He noted that at this rate the level of bilateral trade will soon cross the $1 billion mark. He pointed out a number of steps that the government had taken to facilitate both bilateral as well as transit trade.

Pakistan had reduced by half the list of 24 items that were banned under the Afghan transit trade. The minister announced that additional items will be excluded from the banned list.

For the remainder, the minister urged the Afghan side to strengthen customs arrangement and tariff regime before any further progress is made. He outlined measures that were adopted by the Pakistan authorities to remove irritants hampering the flow of goods under the Afghan Transit Trade.

In this regard, he pointed out that a decision in principle had been taken to remove any discriminatory provision against the ATT cargo. Indeed, the government had given certain concessions such as extended storage of ATT cargo at KPT compared to normal cargo.

As an important step, the Port Qasim was also allowed to handle the Afghan cargo, which was previously restricted to the Karachi Port only. The finance minister also pointed out that with a view to facilitating border trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former was ready to open additional customs posts. In this respect, the government had already notified Qilla Ghulam Khan as one such post near the border with Khost and was looking for establishing two additional points in the future.

The Afghan finance minister welcomed the steps taken by Pakistan and expressed satisfaction on the progress made towards implementing the JMC decisions.-APP