PESHAWAR: In a state of compulsion, the exporters have openly auctioned perishable items loaded in the trucks and trailers stranded at Pak-Afghan border at Torkham for the past many weeks.

Several traders in Peshawar told Dawn on Saturday that most of the export items, especially vegetables and fresh fruits, had decayed, but whatever remained was openly auctioned on the roads and sold in different localities along the border areas.

“We had requested the local vendors and shopkeepers to extend us cooperation by buying vegetables and fruits even at half rate so that the exporters could recover at least the transportation charges,” Khan Gul said and urged the government to open the border as soon as possible.

He said that the traders who had some sort of business setup in Peshawar availed of the opportunity to sell the export goods in local areas and managed to recover financial losses to a great extent, but others suffered total loss.

The traders, he said, had brought back the containers to Peshawar and sold the perishable items in the local market.

A trader said that the quality of vegetables meant for export was affected in containers stranded at the border.

Another trader, Saleem Khan, said that he was a small-scale businessman, but the border closure had caused huge losses to all of them.

He said that with closure of the border local vegetables were available at reasonable prices, but the price of tomato had gone up because the wholesalers had cancelled their agreements with the Afghanistanbased importers and as result the rates soared in Peshawar markets also.

He said that five kilogrammes of tomatoes was available here at about Rs600, but the price would come down once its supply was started from different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or with the opening of Pak-Afghan border.

Pak-Afghan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry senior vice-president Ziaul Haq Sarhadi, when contacted, said that the prolonged closure of the border had forced the exporters to end their business because no one was ready to face huge fi nancial losses on daily basis.

The shipping companies are charging between $100 and $165 per container on daily basis in addition to the Rs5,000 daily transport charges (per truck), and customs charges, which is not affordable for people with limited resources, he said.

Mr Sarhadi, who is also vice chairman of the FPCCI’s standing committee on dry ports, said that export, import business with Afghanistan and central Asian states had almost come to a standstill due to closure of the border.

He also talked about port surcharge and loading charges and said that Pakistani business community would be unable to restore confidence of foreign traders for resumption of trade activities if the standoff continued any longer.

“We have always raised the slogan that national security should be our top priority, but the government should not adopt discriminatory attitude which has kept Wagah border open and closed the Torkham border at the cost of our business,” he complained.

Mr Sarhadi said that the disturbed situation had already brought the Pak-Afghan bilateral trade from $2.5 billion to $1.5 billion.

He said that textile sector in Pakistan also suffered badly due to the prolonged break in supply of wool from Afghanistan.

He said that the border closure without any notice had bankrupted many of the exporters and they would be unable to continue their business in future due to the uncertain situation.

He said that supply had also been stopped to the central Asian states and the exporters and importers had to cancel their agreements to seek other options.

He said that this uncertain situation would cause a huge loss to the national economy.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2017