Promoting trade in FATA

The Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi inaugurated a market of 1344 shops with modern civic facilities including parks, car parking, water supply network and solar power system in Miramshah, the Headquarter of North Waziristan, on Monday. The modern trade complex was built by Pak Army. The Prime Minister also inaugurated the projects of National Logistic Cell Terminal and Bus Terminal to connect Ghulam Khan Kali trade route with CPEC via Dera Ismail Khan. Addressing tribal elders on this occasion, he assured the mainstreaming of FATA by fully implementing its reforms Package. He said that Miramshah will serve as entry gate to Central Asia.

The shopping centre with modern civic amenities in the Agency Headquarter of North Waziristan will give impetus to business activities in this agency of the tribal belt It will also enable the traders of the area to exports Pakistani goods to the adjacent provinces of Afghanistan including Khost, Paktia and Paktika. It will partially compensate the loss of export market to China and India in the central provinces of Afghanistan.

Gaining access to the export market of central Asian States has been a verbal favorite theme of PML-N governments since 1991. The visionary and scholar federal minster of economic affairs in the first Nawaz Sharif government, Sardar Asif Ahmad Ali made a number of interactive tours of Central Asian states along with the representatives of trade bodies and explored markets for goods and services of Pakistan. But as usual the PML-N leadership did not show seriousness to take practical steps in the form of opening braches of Pakistan Banks there and encourage the entry of banks from Central Asia into Pakistan to boost bilateral trade which the eminent economists suggested in the government sponsored seminars with a salient proposal of open ended exchange policy.

There is no denying the fact that instability in Afghanistan was a major stumbling block in boosting bilateral trade with the Central Asian States but the transit of Iran could have been used in the decade of 1990s for access to the market of these states. The entry gates of Ghulam Khan Kali, Angoor Adda and Torkham for trade with Central Asia will not be greatly beneficial till such time peace and stability returns to Afghanistan, the chances of which seem remote in the near future. A window of opportunity did come in early 1992 when the then Afghan President Dr. Najeeb Ullah was making hectic efforts for a negotiated settlement with the leadership of Afghan Tanzimat living in Pakistan. But at that time Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif failed to take a wise foreign policy decision to buttress the efforts of United Nations’ representative on Afghanistan Benon Sewan. The government in Kabul collapsed and fratricidal war ensued among the Afghan Warlords which ultimately culminated in the emergence of Afghan Taliban.

India has expanded its trade with Central Asia via Iran and will be using the Chahbahar port forfurther increasing the quantum of its exports. The successive governments particularly the governments of the two mainstream political parties did nothing in their three tenures of governments to give incentives to the entrepreneurial class for the pursuit and usage of latest technologies in their industries and floating foreign markets ‘oriented innovations. Consequently, Pakistani industry is on second generation technology and is no longer competitive and our export goods can not compete with identical products from India, Bangladesh and Vietnam, not to speak of China. The present government has pushed the country to the brink of becoming a trading nation because of free trade and preferential trade agreements with three countries, largely loaded against the business interest of Pakistan.

Mainstreaming of FATA has been a slogan of a number of KP Governors in tribal areas ADP meetings and presentations of bureaucrats but the issue remained on the backburner and it is still there. The tenure of the incumbent government expires on 31st May but it is not willing to pass legislation from the parliament for the merger of tribal areas with KP in accordance with aspirations of tribesmen. Appeasing the leadership of JUI (F) and PK MAP at the cost millions of tribal people is against the principles of equity and social justice.