- Tuesday, April 30, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
WITH the Taliban taking over Kabul, bilateral trade between India and Afghanistan will get hit significantly in these times of uncertainty, exporters said.
General Ajay Sahai, the director of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), said domestic exporters should cautiously follow the political development in Afghanistan, particularly over payments, for which adequate credit insurance may be availed by them.
“The trade will be impacted. It would reduce due to the growing uncertainty in Afghanistan,” he said on Monday (16).
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Former FIEO president and country’s leading exporter S K Saraf also said that there will be a significant fall in the bilateral trade.
“We may not lose all because they need our products,” he said.
Afghanistan is currently staring at an uncertain future as president Ashraf Ghani left the country just before Kabul fell into the hands of the extremist groups on Sunday (15).
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FIEO vice president Khalid Khan also felt that the trade between the two countries would be at a complete standstill for a certain period of time, since the situation is out of control in Afghanistan.
“It is a landlocked country and the air route is the main medium of exports and that has been disrupted. Trade will resume only after the uncertainty will get down,” Khan said.
Biswajit Dhar, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University said India’s aid to Afghanistan was creating a market for domestic products and due to the current situation, “all this will stop”.
Arvind Goenka, chairman of Plastics Export Promotion Council of India (PLEXCONCIL) said private players now will have to deal through third countries to export to Afghanistan.
Rajiv Malhotra, proprietor of Sai International and an exporter to Afghanistan, said exports from India would completely stop as now there will be an issue of timely payment.
“We are watching the situation to decide on our next move,” Malhotra said.
The bilateral trade between India and Afghanistan stood at $1.4 billion in 2020-21 as against $1.52 billion in 2019-20. Exports from India were $826 million and imports were aggregated at $510 million in 2020-21.
While Afghan exports to India include dried raisin, walnut, almond, fig, pine nut, pistachios, dried apricot and fresh fruits such as apricot, cherry, watermelon, and medicinal herbs, India’s outbound shipments to that country include tea, coffee, pepper and cotton.
