KARACHI, April 27: Pakistan Railway’s high freight charges for wagons are hindering export of bulk commodities, like wheat and cement, to India which is importing huge quantity of these commodities to meet its domestic shortfall.

Exporters’ representative bodies have approached the government demanding a cut in railway’s freight charges which are on the higher side.

India is expected to import around three million tons of wheat to meet its domestic demand, and is also faced with cement shortage where high development pace has created wide gap between demand and supply.

However, exporters are extremely perturbed over the indifferent attitude of policy-makers, particularly Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) which is assigned to promote country’s exports, in general, and of non-traditional goods, in particular.

At present the government does not allow transportation of goods to India by trucks and trailers whereas railway freight charges for wagons are very high. Therefore, exporters are in a fix how to capture Indian market for these two commodities which are in exportable surplus in the country and are also better placed than other world traders due to proximity of distance.

The Pakistan Railways charges Rs500 per ton (around $8 per ton) in freight from Lahore to Attari (India) which is hardly 30 kms in distance.

Against this, sea freight from Karachi to Mumbay is around $7 per ton. However, the most interesting feature is that from Attari to Chundrigar with a distance of 250km, the Indian Railways charges $2 per ton only.

Trade and industry representatives feel that for the first time an opportunity had risen where Pakistan could reduce its bilateral trade deficit with India by exporting these two non-traditional commodities to the neighbouring country. However, they feel that without reducing railways freight charges, they cannot capture the Indian market.

“We are already confronted with a number of technical barriers being used by Indian authorities which hinders our imports to India,” a leading exporter told Dawn on Friday.

He said if our government does no come up with a plan to export these two commodities which are in surplus, the trade could not fight this war alone.

He said the TDAP should have come up with extraordinary measures to facilitate trade in export of these bulk commodities.

The country is likely to harvest bumper wheat crop of around 24 million tons and is also having surplus capacity of around six million tons of cement per annum, he added.