Pak-Afghan border: goods worth millions of dollars remain stuck

Goods worth millions of dollars remain stuck on both sides of the countries as Pak-Afghan border remained closed on Tuesday. Trade estimates reveal that in five days approximately goods worth 300 million dollars worth are stuck at the border. The Government of Pakistan had no other choice but to seal Chaman and Torkham borders after new wave of terrorist activities continued hitting the country, resulting in deaths of more than 100 civilians. Border closure resulted in halt in trade activities between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistan caters almost 50 percent of commodity handling of Afghanistan as goods arrive through legal trade and through Afghanistan Transit Trade. Pakistan's exports to Afghanistan have been in the range of 2 billion dollars per annum. It touched its peak of 2.66 billion dollars in 2011 but slipped to around 1.7 billion dollars in 2015. However, under the umbrella of transit trade it showed a whopping increase.
In 2011, it was around 1.7 billion dollars while in 2015 it reached to 3.2 billion dollars. Beside this according to members of trade association smuggling has been another source of goods movement. Though one cannot quantify the volume but the safer estimate would be around 2 to 2.5 billion dollars. Since the stoppage of movement of trucks, it has been estimated that about 300 million dollar worth of goods remain stuck on both sides of the border where truck drivers are waiting for green signal to move to their destination.