Pakistanis delay payments to Afghan cotton growers

KANDAHAR CITY (Pajhwok): Pakistani businessmen have been delaying the payment of $20 million to Afghan cotton growers on different pretexts, an official said on Tuesday.

Syed Sarwar Amani, head of the Kandahar Chamber of Mines and Industry, told Pajhwok Afghan News the businessmen had exported tens of tonnes of cotton worth $20 million to Pakistani businessmen, mostly private companies.

He accused the Pakistani traders of denying payments intentionally and presenting unnecessary pretexts.

“They make different arguments, sometimes they say the sellers are on the blacklist and they cannot transfer the amount because they will face penalties. They also say the cotton we provided was not pure. They forward different reasons.”

Deputy Head of Chamber of Commerce Eng. Abdul Baqi Beena said there had been some problems in the Afghan banking system over the past few years and Pakistani traders stick to this point to delay payments to Afghan formers.

He explained the Pakistani businessmen paid some Afghan growers recently, but they equated one dollar fir 170 Pakistani rupees. A dollar currently accounts for 222 rupees. Thus, every Afghan farmer, who was paid $100,000, suffered a 500,000 rupees loss.

He said in the future alternative markets for cotton export would be explored --- one of them Turkiye.

Five months ago, Afghan traders exported 30 tons of cotton to Turkiye as a sample which was admired by the people there. This season most part of cotton yield is set to be exported to Turkiye.

Another businessman Yar Mohammad said Pakistani businessmen still owe us $1.5 million while we got big part of our sum, we do not have any other market for our cotton products therefore Pakistani traders create problems for us.

He said: “I received huge chunk of my money , but they still owe me more than 1.5 million and they account the US Dollar with a lower price due to which we are also facing losses.”

Farida Ahmad, another businessman associated with cotton export, most items exported to Pakistan therefore the payment gets delayed for a long time.

He said efforts were on to export cotton to Iran and Turkiye because both the countries had demanded cotton from Afghanistan.

He added: “As Afghanistan is a land locked country and most of our exports go to Pakistan who takes the advantage of our geographical problem. We try to export cotton to Iran or Turkiye.”

Afghanistan annually produces 400,000 tons of cotton, 60 percent of the product is processed here for oil and other animal food extracts while 40 percent pure cotton is exported to foreign countries.

nh/aw/mud