The long-term closure of major crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan has caused billion-dollar losses to Pakistani traders and exporters, while also driving up trade and transit costs on both sides of the border, the Dawn newspaper reported.<\/p>\n
According to the report, key crossings including Torkham and Chaman were shut in October 2025 following political and security tensions, a move that halted the movement of commercial goods, left freight vehicles stranded en route and spoiled some agricultural produce.<\/p>\n
Rehman Gul, a Pakistani commission agent who has worked in agricultural trade for 21 years, told Dawn that several cargo vehicles carrying traders\u2019 goods were left stuck on the road after the closures. He added that he had lost about 110 million Pakistani rupees solely from payments made for goods and transportation.<\/p>\n
According to him, traders are now losing between 1 million and 1.5 million rupees a day. He also said shipments of lemons, chillies and garlic had gone bad because they remained too long in containers, and the disruption had also pushed up the price of some essential goods.<\/p>\n
Zia-ul-Haq Sarhadi, senior vice-president of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Pakistan exports goods worth about $1.5 billion annually to Afghanistan. He estimated that the 10-month closure of these crossings had caused nearly $1 billion in losses to Pakistani traders.<\/p>\n
Sarhadi added that Pakistan\u2019s exports to Central Asian countries via Afghanistan are also worth about $800 million a year. He said the suspension of transit trade over the past 10 months had caused about $225 million in losses to Pakistani exporters.<\/p>\n
The disruption has also raised the cost of importing cotton, pulses and some other goods from Central Asia, items that were previously transported through Afghanistan at lower cost. Sarhadi said Afghanistan\u2019s exports to India through the Wagah border are worth about $300 million annually, and Afghan traders have also suffered losses of nearly $200 million as a result of the transit halt.<\/p>\n
The report said the continued situation has also affected employment, with Sarhadi saying millions of people have lost their jobs directly or indirectly. He warned that rising unemployment has placed additional pressure on law and order in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.<\/p>\n
According to him, Karachi\u2019s ports remain the main transit hub for Afghan goods, and each year about 40,000 to 45,000 containers are transported through Pakistan to Afghanistan. Pakistan earns about $160 million annually from this transit trade, but Sarhadi estimated that Islamabad has lost around $106 million from this sector due to the closure of the crossings.<\/p>\n
He also said about 10,000 transit containers had been held up in Pakistan between October 2025 and April 2026. With an average daily penalty of $120 per container, Afghan importers paid about $1.2 million in additional costs each day.<\/p>\n
The business community has urged Islamabad and Kabul to keep trade separate from political disputes, reopen the Torkham and Chaman crossings, and restore trade routes that have supported the livelihoods of thousands of families in the region for decades. Torkham in Nangarhar province and Chaman along the Balochistan border are among the most important land corridors for trade and transit between Afghanistan and Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Closure of Afghanistan-Pakistan crossings has caused billion-dollar losses, raised costs and disrupted trade, exporters and transit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20856","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\/20856","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=20856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}