Trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan across the Torkham border resumed on Sunday after border administrations of the two countries held a successful round of talks over new tax measures introduced by Afghan authorities.
Cargo traffic remained suspended for three days because of a strike by transporters of both countries against the imposition of ‘land tax’ by the Afghan customs authorities. Hundreds of vehicles were stranded on both sides of the border as the Afghan authorities refused entry to them without paying the newly imposed tax.
Pakistani transporters said every vehicle from here was required to pay 5,000 afghanis, while Afghan transporters were charged half the amount upon their entry into Afghanistan.
“We have been informed by Afghanistan borders affairs in-charge Qasim Shinwari that the Afghan authority will not charge 5,000 afghanis from Pakistani transporters and have assured that this practice will not take place in the coming months,” Khyber Agency political agent Capt (retd) Khalid Mehmood told The Express Tribune by telephone.
“More than two thousand trucks loaded with cement, vegetables, fruits, daily-use and other items were stranded on the border at Torkham in protest because the additional entry tax levied by Afghanistan was unbearable for them,” Khyber Transport Association’s president Shakir Afridi told The Express Tribune.
Afghan authorities at Torkham in Fata and Chaman in Balochistan were charging 5,000 afghanis that comes to more than Rs5,000. However, Pakistan did not impose any taxes on the movement of cargo trucks as a goodwill gesture, Afridi said.
“The tax measure was allegedly aimed at crippling trade between the two countries. It seems the decision was taken by government of Qandahar and the Afghan border authorities without taking the approval of the central government in Kabul,” he said.
Afridi added that the governments in Islamabad and Kabul had decided in the 2011 Islamabad Declaration that no tax would be levied at border points to facilitate greater business activity.
“Such steps would only fuel acrimony between the people of the two countries,” he said and called for addressing the issue on a war footing.
CRSS Information: Trade between the two neighbors has been suspended twice before this year due to bilateral tensions resulting in the sealing of the Pak-Afghan border. Earlier in August, the border at Chaman was sealed after an Afghan national burnt a Pakistani flag which he snatched from a group of Pakistanis protesting at the border against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks about Balochistan and his support to the separatists in the province. Prior to that, in May, the border was closed after a dispute surfaced over construction at the Torkham border by the Pakistani side. It led to clashes between the Afghan and Pakistani forces in June, causing casualties on both sides, including the death of a Pakistani Major. Pakistan shares a 2500 km long border with the landlocked Afghanistan and traders on both sides have to depend mostly on crossing points at Torkham and Chaman.
This article originally appeared in The Express Tribune, October 10, 2016. Original link.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in the article are not necessarily supported by CRSS.