Asad Qaiser, a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, announced that a meeting called the “Loya Jirga” will be held in July to discuss the consequences of the closed border crossings with Afghanistan. According to him, the main goal of this meeting is to find practical solutions to reopen trade routes between the two countries and to reduce the economic damages caused by the halt in trade.<\/p>\n
On Monday, 22nd June, Qaiser met with officials from Pakistan’s chambers of commerce and stated that the continued closure of the border crossings has inflicted severe damage on Pakistan’s economy. He added that many businesses have suffered losses and hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs.<\/p>\n
He said that representatives from the commercial, industrial sectors, and other key stakeholders will attend the upcoming meeting to discuss sustainable solutions. However, he did not provide details regarding the exact date and location of the Loya Jirga.<\/p>\n
Qaiser emphasized that until the trade routes with Afghanistan and Central Asian countries are fully reopened, Pakistan will continue to face economic stagnation. He also called for separating political issues from trade relations, stating that ordinary citizens on both sides of the border should not bear the cost of political disagreements.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, officials of the Torkham Chamber of Commerce reported that this ongoing situation has resulted in unemployment for approximately two million people and that traders have suffered financial losses amounting to nearly $278 million. According to participants of this meeting, about 50 percent of the economic activities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have been affected, and some traders have moved their businesses to Lahore and other cities.<\/p>\n
The border crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan have remained closed for nearly eight months following tensions and military clashes between Pakistani forces and the Taliban administration. Besides the financial losses, this situation has also cast a shadow over the livelihoods of thousands of families in border areas, highlighting once again the absence of a stable and responsible mechanism for managing economic relations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan plans a ‘Loya Jirga’ in July to address the closed border with Afghanistan, aiming to restore trade and reduce economic losses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-important-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}