BEIJING: Moin ul Haque, Pakistan’s Ambassador to China, said on Sunday that the Pakistani and Chinese governments were making joint efforts to bring more Pakistani agro products and seafood through Karakoram Highway to the Chinese market.
Commenting on Pakistan’s first-ever land containerized seafood cargo, which arrived in Xinjiang, China, through Karakoram Highway, he said that facilitating trade and Pakistani high-quality products exports through the Khunjerab border was the shared objective of Pakistan and China.
Last week, a Pakistani truck loaded with cold chain containers arrived via a cross-border land way at Kashgar, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
This was the first-time seafood containers from Pakistan have been reached by road from Karachi to Kashgar along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) flagship project.
A Pakistani transport company’s representative said that it was the first attempt at a bilateral cross-border route transport business in partnership with a Chinese firm.
Chinese partners for more opportunities in Pakistan
He added that the route’s cost and rate of cold chain transport are being assessed; the Chinese partners are also looking for further opportunities to import more goods from Pakistan.
The representative said that the shipment expenditure by truck was far below that of air transport and it had easy and simpler customs clearance procedures.
Moreover, shipment by road reduces transport time to just eight days, which is suitable for point-to-point and small-scale logistics, as the sea transport from Karachi Port to Yangshan Port, Shanghai takes around a month.
