ISLAMABAD, Jan 9: The government has excluded seven more items from the negative list of Afghan Transit Trade (ATT). The items, which were excluded from the list , included: razor shaving blade; art silk fabric; capacitors; video cassettes; vegetable ghee; cigar and cheroots; and shampoo.

According to a notification of the commerce ministry issued here on Friday, the items which were prohibited to bring into Pakistan by sea, land and air in transit to Afghanistan were: cigarillos and cigarettes of tobacco or of tobacco substitutes; yarn other than cotton yarn; dyes and chemicals; PVC and PMC materials; black tea (except Op-Pekoe); cooking oil; tyres and tubes; refrigerators; air-conditioners; television and parts thereof; soap; autoparts (all sorts); and telephone sets.

Earlier, the Afghan government has also requested for exclusion of three items - refrigerators, air-conditioners, televisions and its parts - from the negative list, but the government of Pakistan declined to entertain the offer on the fear that these items would be smuggled back into the country, causing considerable harm to the local industry.

An official at the commerce ministry told Dawn on Friday that the exclusion of the remaining items, which were less prone to smuggling, would be from the list to be announced in the next phase.

On the request of the Afghan government, Pakistan had recently excluded eight items from the negative list. At present only 13 items are on the negative list, most of which are prone to smuggling back into the country. The major items of transit are sugar, plastic goods, blankets, heaters, padlocks, battery cells, pencils and lighters.

According to the official statistics, the value of ATT has increased by more than 58 per cent during the July-October period of the current financial year, over the same period of last year.

The value of ATT during the period under review stood at Rs7.677bn against Rs4.843 billion over the same period of last year, an increase of 58 per cent.