Afghan Diplomat Praises India's Decision to Relax Fumigation Rules on Agri Imports

Farid Mamundzay, Afghanistan's ambassador to India, commended the Indian government on Wednesday for reducing fumigation requirements for agricultural imports from Afghanistan till May 2023.

Afghan businesses have been asking for this for a long time, he added, and the easing will make trading between New Delhi and Kabul easier. Mamundzay stated in a series of tweets that the move will also allow suffering Afghan farmers to export their goods to a "reliable market."

It is not new to relax fumigation regulations for agricultural imports. Between 2017 and 2021, the Indian government published identical notices virtually every year, with one exception in 2014.

On May 7, India's Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare announced the easing of fumigation requirements for many nations, including Afghanistan, under the Plant Quarantine (Regulation of Import into India) Order, 2003.

Previously, dried fruit shipments from Afghanistan, for example, had to be fumigated with methyl bromide, which was considered as a time-consuming process that also harmed the product's quality.

Afghanistan has a long history of exporting agricultural items to India, including nuts, coffee, tea, spices, fruits, vegetables, and oilseeds.

Bilateral Trade

In the financial year 2019-20, bilateral trade between India and Afghanistan had reached $1.5 billion before to the Taliban takeover in August. However, since the Taliban takeover, which coincided with a severe drought, the Afghan economy has been thrown into economic isolation.

Payments between traders in Afghanistan and India are now apparently made through "third parties" in Dubai due to banking problems.

Many Afghan farmers planted "seeds of hope" to receive a big crop this year, according to the Afghan envoy's tweets on Wednesday, however they look to be "futile desires."

Mamundzay was pointing to the difficulties that Afghan farmers and businessmen are experiencing as a result of the country's economic crisis.

According to a World Bank assessment issued last month, per capita income in Afghanistan is expected to have dropped by about one-third in the last months of 2021, wiping out most of the economic progress made since 2007.

The World Bank said that "severe losses in international assistance, loss of access to the central bank's abroad assets, disruption to international banking ties, and a loss of investment confidence" were the primary causes of Afghanistan's economic collapse.