Finance Minister Ishaq Dar Wednesday chaired a meeting to review the preparations for the upcoming 10th Pak-Afghan Joint Economic Commission session. Additional Secretary Economic Affairs Division Omar Hamid briefed the meeting on the implementation status of the decisions taken on bilateral economic issues between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the previous JEC meeting.
Hamid informed the meeting that on behalf of the government of Pakistan, Ministry of Commerce has undertaken certain initiatives to boost bilateral trade between the two countries to $5 billion in coming years, while on the other hand, the draft for the Preferential Trade Agreement had been shared with Afghanistan and their feedback on the subject is awaited.
Both the countries have also nominated their members for the Joint Business Council and the Activation of JBC is on the agenda of the JEC. Chairman FBR told the meeting that Web Based One Custom Module for partial shipment is already operational and partial shipments are allowed in the system to increase the volume of trade between the two countries. The FBR has developed a module for physical uploading of all T-1 and cross-border certificates through user IDs issued to the officials of the Afghan Customs in lieu of the Electronic Data Interchange linkage with Afghan Customs, Chairman FBR said.
Other participants of the meeting from Ministries of Housing and Works, National Health Services, Railways, Water and Power, Ports and Shipping, National Food Security and Petroleum and Natural Resources also briefed the chair that they have been actively pursuing the tasks assigned to them under the 9th JEC held in February 2014. Dar said increasing trade with the neighbouring countries will not only boost the economies of the countries but will also prove helpful in strengthening friendly relations between the brother countries.-PR