In a first-of-its-kind trading transaction uniting the four nations, an Indian private merchant has exported commercial products to landlocked Uzbekistan via Pakistan and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. A spokesperson for the Taliban’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce said trucks carrying 140 tonnes of merchandise, largely Indian sugar, left Kabul on Wednesday for Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital.
The package landed in the Afghan capital a day earlier, according to Maulana Zaheer, via the Torkham border crossing between the two nations. The ministry held a special ceremony to assist the movement of Indian commodities, describing it as a significant step toward transforming Afghanistan into a major commerce hub for Central and South Asia.
The cargo originated from Mumbai and travelled through the Karachi seaport earlier this month before being trucked to its Uzbek importer under a recently inked bilateral transit trade agreement between Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed the agreement along with several other documents during his two-day official visit to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, in early March. The Pakistani official emphasized that the Uzbekistan-bound Indian commercial consignment was a privately arranged activity under the agreement and had no government involvement from any of the four countries. “It will now become a regular activity, and Uzbekistan will be able to import goods from anywhere through Pakistani seaports,” said the official. Taliban authorities are bound to facilitate the trade activity because Uzbekistan, like landlocked Afghanistan, also has rights to access Pakistani ports to conduct international trade, the official added.
