Sunday, December 30, 2012
Kabul (BNA) Afghanistan as one of world’s agriculture countries retains unique place in fruit production sector and today Kandahar pomegranates dominates on global fruit markets while officials in southern Kandahar province has reported that so far nearly $17.5 million have been achieved from the pomegranate export this year.
Commenting on the growth of pomegranate export, engineer Abdul Baqi deputy of Afghanistan chamber of commerce and industries said that fortunately pomegranate noticeably increased to at least 30 thousand tones this year in southern Kandahar province and most of this unique fruit exported to neighboring Pakistan and onward to the international markets adding that costing $5.2 million nearly 4696 tones pomegranates were exported to Dubai, Russia and India after standard packaging.
During the previous year, southern Kandahar province enjoyed better security situations and the success laid positive impacts on agriculture sector and peaceful environment facilitated local formers to harvest better crops and obtain satisfactory incomes from the exports, said deputy of Afghanistan chamber of commerce and industries engineer Abdul Baqi.
Farmers in southern Kandahar province are coping with series of technical problems and ministries of transport and agriculture failed to focus on their issues as local farm owners and fruit merchants lacking access to the existence of transportation system and packing process of their fruit products.
At the meantime, fresh fruit association export chairman Muhammad Akram announced air export quit expensive to the local Afghan farmers and expressed concern over land routs due to technical difficulties faced by them and added that these problems lay negative impacts on better quality of the fruit products as neighboring Pakistan has always created barriers on ways of Afghan traders in India-Pakistan Wagah border to ensure on time export of products in Indian markets.
Pakistan is the biggest market for Afghan fruits and the neighboring country maintains moral obligation to accomplish its bilateral trade commitments in letter in sprit to facilitate the traders transfer their merchandize easily without facing hurdles.
Local pomegranate dealer in southern Kandahar province Hajji Akhtar announce the production of fruit in the country remarkable this year and said that each seven kg pomegranate pack is sold from 200 to 400 Afghani adding that restoration of peace and security in the villages would have major impacts on economic growth of Afghanistan alongside focusing on transportation and packing system and it will help local farmers to export their agriculture products with higher price into world markets.
This came after pomegranates found in southern Kandahar province has dominated world fruit markets during the recent years after the crops attained growth in the country.
