KHYBER: The participants of a meeting have blamed delay in completion of customs terminal by National Logistic Cell (NLC) at Torkham and slow process of security clearance by government agencies for decline in bilateral trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The meeting between officials of customs and NLC and representatives of traders and transporters was held at Torkham the other day. It was a follow up of a recently held meeting between customs collector and local importers and exporters in Peshawar.

Some participants of the Wednesday’s meeting told Dawn that they raised the issue of an almost dormant import situation from the Afghan side and lodged complaints about ‘unfulfilled promises’ by custom authorities for improvement in provision of facilities in exporting Pakistani goods to Afghanistan.

They said that NLC failed to honour its commitment of completing the much awaited customs terminal and still hundreds of loaded vehicles were made to wait for days for clearance on both sides of the border.

A coal importer in Torkham told Dawn that import of vegetables from Afghanistan, which would cause traffic congestion at the border point, had almost stopped due to the end of fruits season.

However, he said that local authorities were still not allowing other import vehicles to come to Pakistan that was badly affecting local importers.

Sources said that customs and NLC officials were at loss to provide any satisfactory answer to the representatives of traders and transporters. They said that officials faced a volley of critical questions and objections from them.

Sources said that lack of coordination between different government departments operating at Torkham was also identified as a cause in delay of clearance of loaded vehicles from both countries.

“NLC charges every vehicle Rs2,500 as parking fee and an additional amount of Rs1,500 is taken from every vehicle for electronic scanning while the scanning machine is either out of order most of the time or the security personnel don’t accept the scanning result and subject the vehicle to repeated manual checking,” a source told Dawn. He said that the reservations of traders and exporters were expressed during the meeting but to no avail.

The traders and transporters representatives were not satisfied with the ‘hollow’ assurances given to them by the customs and NLC officials. They believed that custom officials failed for an umpteenth time to fulfil their promises and resolve grievances of traders.

They alleged that with faulty trade policy and inability to provide facilities to local traders and transporters, bilateral trade was on a constant decline with some other neighbouring countries of Afghanistan taking advantage of the situation.

Ironically, custom department was represented by four officials, who were already transferred from Torkham. “This shows the level of the interest of our officials in promoting trade with Afghanistan. We were made to sit with a bunch of transferred officials,” a participant of the meeting told Dawn.

The comments of the officials could not be obtained as they relinquished their posts. This scribe also tried to ascertain the point of view of NLC about delay in completion of custom terminal but the relevant officials did not respond.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2024