KABUL: Pakistan’s export of cement to Afghanistan has decreased from 0.174 million tons to 0.166 million tons during of January 2017, compared to the corresponding period last year, Pakistani media reported on Monday.
This represents a 4.5 percent drop. Industry stakeholders expressed their concerns over the drop in overall exports to Afghanistan that have declined by 10.88 percent in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, The Nation, a Pakistani newspaper, reported.
The industries also said that cement exports to India have registered an increase of 79.34 percent between July 2016 to January 2017. Export by sea declined by 19.23 percent during first seven months of current fiscal.
“Factors contributing to decline in exports include the increase in fuel prices and other input costs. The most damaging were barriers-to-entry set up by the countries we export to, such as anti-dumping duty imposed by South Africa to protect its local industry,” a Pakistani export told the Nation.
Afghanistan’s Central Statistics Organization (CSO) said Pakistani flour has lost its place in the country’s markets. CSO officials said that currently most of Afghanistan’s flour is now importing from Kazakhstan which previously came from Pakistan.
According to CSO statistics, Afghanistan needed 5.9 million tons of flower in 2016 of which 1.4 tons was imported from other countries and rest was produced by the country itself.
The fall in exports from Pakistan comes as the tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan have increased since a deadly suicide attack in a Sufi shrine in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh that killed 75 people.
After the attack, Pakistan closed the Torkham border post. It claimed that the attack on the shrine was planned in Afghanistan. Later Pakistan started missile attacks on the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, leaving hundreds of families homeless.
New border measures by Pakistan has led to the termination of all sorts of business interactions between the two countries. Thousands of people are also stuck on both sides of the border.
