Iran, Afghanistan and India on April 11 finished negotiating the
details of the trilateral transport and transit pact, meant to provide
legal framework to operate trade corridors via Iran's Chabahar port, the
report said.
This development could possibly downgrade Pakistan's importance
from being the primary facilitator of India-Afghanistan trade to a mere
back-up, meaning that Pakistan has potentially lost a great opportunity
to build strategic trade ties with regional economies, it said.
Officials in the Ministry of Commerce told the paper that Afghan
authorities were slower in responding to the proposed bilateral and
transit trade related matters and it seemed that they were least
interested towards Pakistan and would rather devote their time and
energy towards materialising the trilateral agreement with Iran and
India.
"All this happened because Pakistan refused to include India in the Pak-Afghan transit trade agreement," the official claimed.
Afghanistan insists that India must be part of the transit trade
agreement in the same way as Pakistan uses Afghan soil to reach Central
Asian states, the report said. The officer cited a draft agreement
pertaining to the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) that the ministry
had sent months ago.
He insisted that there has been no response from Kabul.
"We have learnt that they have shared the draft agreement with
their security agencies for clearance, which is surprising for us," the
official said.
Moreover, the maiden meeting of the Pak-Afghan Joint Business
Council (JBC) has not been held even after its establishment around five
months ago to discuss issues and to devise strategies for enhancing
bilateral trade, it said.
The JBC was supposed to hold its first meeting in February last year, but it could not take place.
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