KARACHI: The Ambassador of Tajikistan to Pakistan Ismatullo Nasredin and President Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry Muhammad Idrees, while identifying lack of connectivity between Pakistan and Tajikistan as one of most serious hurdles hindering trade, stressed the need to commence direct flights between Pakistan and Tajikistan which would drastically reduce the travel time to just ‘one hour and twenty minutes’ from 22 hours as currently, the travelers take connecting flights either from Dubai or Istanbul to reach Dushanbe.
Exchanging views at a meeting held at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI), Tajik Envoy and President KCCI noted that despite being geographically close to each other and having huge potential to improve trade and economic, trade volume remains very limited due to lack of connectivity which was the most serious obstacle, disallowing the two countries to be more closer to each other.”
Honorary Consul General of Tajikistan Irshad Kassim Ali, President KCCI Muhammad Idrees, Vice President KCCI Qazi Zahid Hussain, Former President KCCI Abdullah Zaki, Chairman Diplomatic Missions & Embassies Liaison Subcommittee Ziaul Arfeen, Former Vice President KCCI Shamsul Islam Khan and KCCI Managing Committee Members attended the meeting.
Tajik Ambassador, who was on his second visit to Karachi, informed that he will be holding a meeting with Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority next week and subsequently discuss this issue with Tajik Civil Aviation Authority as well so that this pressing problem could be sorted out as it was not feasible for businessmen to travel for 22 hours to reach Dushanbe which was less than one-and-a-half away from Pakistan.
He further mentioned that although Pakistan and Tajikistan share excellent relation and Pakistan was a reliable partner of Tajikistan in terms of political relations, security, economic and cultural cooperation but still “there are a lot of problems that we both need to overcome.”
Commenting on declining trade volume between the two countries, the Envoy said that the peak time was 2013 when trade between Tajikistan and Pakistan touched US$94 million but it has been constantly declining since then and dropped to US$25 million in 2020.
He said, “In addition to 22 documents signed during last year’s Tajikistan President’s visit to Pakistan in June and Pakistan Prime Minister’s visit to Tajikistan in September, a total of 77 bilateral documents have been signed by both countries during the last 30 years, of which more than 50 documents are related to economic field but unfortunately, only 10 percent of these documents remain effective while the rest of 90 percent of the documents are on papers only.”
“We have Tajik businessmen who are interested in doing business with Pakistani counterparts but this was not happening due to lack of information about each other which is another issue hindering trade”, he added.
