Afghanistan shuts its border to Iranian trucks; official
Spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration [IRICA] announced that cross-border trade between Iran-Afghanistan is closed on Iranian trucks.
Seyed Ruhollah Latifi refers to the events on the Milak border terminal with Afghanistan and said in an interview with ILNA news agency that for more than 10 days before Eid al-Adha, traffic at the Milak border was slow but this border is now closed due to some protests.
“A number of Afghan truckers and transport companies disrupted the return route of Iranian trucks in protest of a decision by the Sistan and Baluchestan Provincial Security Council to suspend smuggling trucks for three months,” he added.
“Of course, they wanted to change this decision with these measures.”
Latifi said that Last week, about 50 Afghan trucks were stopped due to fuel smuggling on Iranian soil, and the Afghan side wants to pay the fine for fuel smuggling, but the trucks should not be stopped in Iran; adding that “In protest of Afghanistan's behavior, the return route of Afghan trucks was also restricted by Iran.”
According to the deputy head of the province’s Road Maintenance and Transportation Organization, a total of 80,072 tons of goods were exported from Milak border in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan Province to the neighboring Afghanistan during the first month of the current Iranian year (March 20-April 19),
Iran’s exports value of products to neighboring Afghanistan registered a 30 percent hike in the first two months of the current Iranian calendar year [from March 21 to May 20, 2020].
With imports worth $125 million, Afghanistan accounted for 7.5% of Iran’s total exports during the first month of the current Iranian year, according to IRICA data.
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