Afghanistan exports 6453 tons of steel bars to Pakistan

JALALABAD (Pajhwok): Afghanistan exported 6453 tons of steel bars to Pakistan during the past one year, the Chamber of Commerce and Investment in eastern Nangarhar province says.

Shakirullah Safi, exports manager at the Nangarhar Chamber of Commerce and Investment, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Wednesday that Afghanistan’s exports had shrunk in recent past, but recorded a 90 percent increase with the Islamic Emirate’s coming to power.

He said there were more than a dozen steel bars manufacturing and steel melting plants in Nangarhar where hundreds of people worked.

Javed Shagiwal, official of a steel melting factory in Nangarhar, told Pajhwok their factory alone exported 800 tons of steel bars to Pakistan this year.

Besides steel bars, he said, they manufactured wheat threshers which had a good market in central Asian countries.

He said if problems concerning electricity and raw materials were resolved, it would lead to increased production and employment of more people.

Laborers who worked in the factory were happy to have found job inside the country.

One of them, Mohammad Hussain, who has been working in steel bars manufacturing for the last 10 years, said previously he worked in Pakistan where he learned the skill, but when this factory was established, he returned to the country and started work here.

He said Afghan workers possessed skills in various fields and if traders invested in establishing factories, most Afghan skilled workers would return to the country and participate in their country’s rebuilding.

Hundreds of people work in the steel mills and steel bars manufacturing shops in Nangarhar. The factories have the capacity to produce 350 tons of steel bars in a day.

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