ISLAMABAD: The Taliban government urged Pakistan to allow Afghan citizens to repatriate their cash and other assets, The News reported Wednesday.
According to the Afghan embassy, Industry and Trade Minister Nooruddin Azizi met with caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani in Islamabad to discuss trade and assets owned by Afghan citizens in Pakistan To be done.
The visit comes less than a week after Pakistan said it had taken steps to deport millions of undocumented Afghans to the Taliban-led administration The reaction to the unwillingness to take action was against the militants who used Afghanistan to carry out attacks in Pakistan.
Taliban officials say the militancy is an internal matter for Pakistan and have called on Islamabad to stop the deportation of Afghan citizens.
“ Bilateral trade, especially in Karachi Port (Afghan) Trapped goods of traders, (Afghan) smooth transfer of refugees (Afghanistan) and related issues were discussed,” The Afghan embassy in Islamabad said in a statement about the meeting.
Afghan citizens have been complained of restrictions on the transfer of assets and cash to Afghanistan when they were repatriated, which were their property in Pakistan.
Kabul insists on leaving containers at Karachi port
Azizi also urged Pakistan to issue thousands of import containers that had been stranded at Karachi port since the closure of Islamabad’s international cargo.
Pakistani officials say they have lost millions of dollars in taxes as goods are being sent duty-free from their ports to land-off Afghanistan، And then being smuggled back across the border.
Afghan officials say Pakistan has stopped more than 3,000 containers bound for Afghanistan at Karachi Port, demanding more taxes and duties, leaving traders Has lost millions of dollars.
Equipment includes advanced electronics, machine parts, chemicals and textiles, all of which attract heavy tariffs when imported into Pakistan. Pakistani officials say the volume of these items for Afghanistan has increased over the past two years and is unrealistic given the market volume there.
Hundreds of these containers have been standing for the past several months, while some have been suspended for more than a year. An official at the Afghan consulate in Peshawar told AFP that the inside was deteriorating and that traders were suffering.
The trade line is one of the many thorny issues that have grown between Kabul and Islamabad since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office said that Jilani had given the message: full potential for regional trade and communication can be used in conjunction with collective action against terrorism
The Foreign Office said the Taliban’s acting trade minister would also hold a tripartite meeting with representatives of Pakistan and Uzbekistan on Tuesday.
The agenda of the tripartite meeting was not clear, but the three countries are working on plans for trade transit and railway links between South and Central Asia that will pass through Afghanistan.
