As per Pakistani media sources, Afghanistan's cement import from Pakistani side has decreased at 4.5 percent from 0.174 million tonnes to 0.166 million tonnes during the duration of January 2017, when compared to the corresponding period last year.

The Nation recently reported that Industry stakeholders expressed their apprehesions over the significant decline in overall exports to Afghanistan which have dropped by 10.88 percent in the first seven months of the current fiscal year.

Afghanistan’s Central Statistics Organization (CSO) stated Pakistani flour has lost its place in the country’s markets. CSO officials said that currently major portion of Afghanistan’s flour is imported from Kazakhstan instead of Pakistan.

In comparison, further it depicted that Indian cement imports from Pakistani side have registered a massive increase of 79.34 percent between July 2016 to January 2017. Though, Export by sea declined by 19.23 percent during first seven months of current fiscal.

The fall in exports from Pakistan comes as the tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan have increased after horrific event of dealy suicide blast in a Sufi shrine in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh that killed 75 people which resulted in closure of Torkham border due to the intelligence reports which pointed Afghanistan to be the base of modus operandi of the terrorists. This led to Pakistani airstrikes within Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan.

According to CSO statistics, Afghanistan needed 5.9 million tons of flower in 2016 of which 1.4 tons was imported from other countries and rest was produced by the Afghanistan, itself.