The U.S.-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) Council met in Kabul and discussed a wide array of trade and investment related topics.
A trade agreement between any two countries is based on mutually beneficial terms while Pakistan has inked the Afghan – Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement that tends to compromise our national interests and will eventually hurt the domestic industry.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are expected to enter in to a new trade and economic cooperation mechanism during the President of Pakistan first official visit to Afghanistan on January 7, 2009
As Afghanistan is likely to be inducted as the eight member of the South Asian Free Trade Area (Safta) by February 2008, minister of state for commerce Jairam Ramesh today said India will bring down duties on 4,356 tariff lines (products) to zero for facilitating trade with Afghanistan.
The Bush administration will push Congress in coming months to approve legislation aimed at creating reconstruction opportunity zones so that goods produced in designated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan can enter the United States duty-free.
Pakistan wants the United States to pass legislation on "reconstruction opportunity zones" that would allow it and Afghanistan to export textiles, clothing and other goods without paying US duties.