NA Speaker chairs task forces of Pak-Afghan friendship body meeting

ISLAMABAD: National Assembly (NA) Speaker Asad Qaisar as a measure for confidence building and to enhance bilateral trade with Afghanistan suggested to ponder on creating border markets or trade areas to encourage bilateral trade and people to people contact with Afghanistan.

The task forces of the Executive Committee of Pakistan-Afghanistan Parliamentary Friendship Group held its meeting with the chair of NA Speaker Asad Qaisar on Thursday. The task forces deliberated a spectrum of issues affecting trade and people to people contact between Pakistan and Afghanistan. A number of proposals were tabled for resolution of outstanding issues.

The task forces agreed to meet next week for finalising their recommendations on normalizing Afghan bound container traffic, liberalizing border trade and visa regime and tracking and scanning of containers on arrival and departure from Pakistan.

During the meeting, the representatives of chamber of commerce and industry contended that due to allowing limited number of container traffic the number of stranded containers had reached up to 8000. They suggested for opening of all the border entry points for easing out container traffic at Ghulam Khan, Chaman and Torkham entry points. They said the Pakistani imports and exports were badly affected since they contained perishable items.

NA Speaker suggested that it should be our prime duty to ease the trade and people coming to Pakistan for medicinal treatment or education. He said due to tougher visa conditions people proceed to India drawing major portion of foreign exchange to India.