The heads of the national chambers of Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan met in Istanbul to discuss further enhancement of economic cooperation among the three countries and integration of their economies.
A joint declaration issued at the end of the forum said trade and economic relations in the region can be enhanced through strong logistic connections between the three countries, and these should in turn be extended to Central Asian countries and to the rest of South Asia.
In December, Pakistan Railways and the Turkish Logistic Company signed an MoU on the establishment of an Istanbul-Islamabad containers train service. The delegates at the forum said the planned service could be branched out by overland links to Afghanistan via Chaman and Torkham.
The Pakistan-Afghanistan Transit Trade Agreement should be amended to accommodate the proposed links, they suggested.
They called for arrangements for fast-track business visas between the three countries.
Turkey hosted the eighth Turkey-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Summit around the theme of “Sustainable Peace in the Heart of Asia,” with the aim to strengthen multidimensional cooperation among the three countries in the fields as politics, security and economic development.