ISLAMABAD, Nov 19: The Afghan government has asked Pakistani authorities to remove cooking oil from the negative list of the Afghan Transit Trade (ATT) agreement.

An official told Dawn on Saturday that Kabul sought the removal of cooking oil from the negative list, saying there was a great demand of the commodity in Afghanistan.

Pakistan had already allowed the import of vegetable ghee under the Afghan Transit Trade, the official said, adding that the customs authorities were most of the time withheld containers of ghee on the plea that it was cooking oil.

He said sometime it became very difficult to differentiate between oil and ghee at the import stage.

The government recently removed three items — tyres and tubes, television sets and its parts and telephone sets — from the negative list of the ATT agreement.

After the withdrawal of these items, the number of items on the ATT negative reduced to three — cooking oil, cigarettes and auto parts — from 24 a few years ago.