Deputy Prime Minister Jamshid Khodjayev reached Kabul at the end of last week on the president’s instruction and was received by Industry and Commerce Minister Nooruddin Azizi. On 26 July he met Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund at the Arg. A 300-member business delegation followed him in.
The offer is specific: preferential tariffs on 14 Afghan export goods, and discounts on rail freight from Uzbekistan into Afghanistan. Fergana region sent about 150 entrepreneurs of its own and plans trade houses in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif. Rail capacity between Mazar-e-Sharif and Termez was on the agenda.
The published figures do not agree with each other, and the spread is the useful part. Bakhtar, the Afghan state agency, put Afghan exports to Uzbekistan at $150 million over the past year, with $111 million already recorded this year, and said Uzbekistan has issued 5,000 visas to Afghan nationals. Uzbek readouts give the target as $5 billion. Afghan accounts of the same meetings describe a plan to reach $2 billion, against bilateral trade the Taliban side puts at $1.6 billion.
A tariff line and a freight discount are instruments a customs office can apply next week. The $5 billion is a heading. Watch which of the 14 goods appear when the tariff order is published, and whether the rail discount is a published rate or a case-by-case decision