Holding the 4th High-Level meeting of the Business Improvement Group in Afghanistan

May 31, 2021

The 4th meeting of the High-Level Working Group on Improving Trade in Afghanistan was chaired by Mr. Mohammad Sulaiman Binshah, Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce, representatives of the ACEBA project, and the precious, semi-precious, and decorative stones sector at the conference hall of this ministry.

At the beginning of the meeting, Mr. Binshah, Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce said, the purpose of establishing a working group to improve trade in Afghanistan, is to find opportunities and challenges for the country's private sector and seek solutions.

Mr. Binshah added, the MoIC has so far prepared 21 plans for the carpet and saffron sector by holding 9 consultative meetings and 3 high-level assemblies, and 11 plans are ready to be implemented.

In this meeting, the opportunities, challenges, and suggestions for precious, semi-precious, and decorative stone sectors, extraction of these stones, process and its added value, and how to increase the export of stones were discussed.

The goals of the Business Improvement Group in Afghanistan are as follows;

Facilitate the participation of enterprises in consultative meetings with government organizations to share challenges and suggestions;

sharing information about challenges and proposals of enterprises with policymakers;

ensuring coordination between the private sector, government organizations, the donor community;

effectively address the challenges of entrepreneurship and design priority programs to address private sector problems.

This working group works on the sectors of carpets, saffron, precious and semi-precious stones, decorative stones, and cashmere.