“Afghanplast” the First Serious Gateway of the Plastics Industry to Afghanistan: Whereas the “Afghanplast” exhibition’s website counter is still counting down the time for about 12 hours more for opening of the doors of the “Uranus Castle Hotel”- A Hotel lobby which has been decorated for this exhibition- only one Iranian news agency has broadcasted the inauguration of the first Afghan plastics industry exhibition. But, why the event has been so important for a couple of Iranian associations and why the news has been selected as one of the headlines of BBC on the 2nd day of the May? In fact, who is the true beneficiary of this exhibition?
About a year ago, when one of the PIM editors wrote a critique about the future of the Iranian plastics industries and the threat of Afghanistan for these industries, the Chief Editor of PIM (now the CEO of this Portal) was baly suffered a period of threats and attacks. His logic (even for his Italian and German friends) was that, Iranian plastics industries have learned thousands of Afghan people for different processes of the plastics and these trained people are returning back home and then after a while will have the plastics markets in their hands. So, at least let their infrastructure market demands would be the shares of the Iranians and or Europenas, and not, once again a market for Indians and Chinese. Very few understood the logic, an the rest forgot it till today.
On April 17th, regarding the first exhibition of plastics industries, the “Mehr News Agency” wrote:
“The first international plastic industry exhibition of Afghanistan (Afghan Plast) will be held in Kabul on May 2-5 with presence of Iranian knowledge-based companies. In the same line, Iranian Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology will support knowledge-based companies wager to take part at the international exposition.
As such, the body has agreed to undertake up to 70 percent of the costs for booth space rental, construction of exhibition booths as well as transport. The event aims to give lift and boom to the domestic plastic industry by attracting investors, manufacturers and experts of the said industry.
The platform is the decisive moment in shaping the Afghanistan plastic industry on modern and standard lines providing market expansion opportunities to all the participants of the plastic industry such as production machines traders & installers, raw material producers and suppliers, finished products manufacturers and traders, industry specific experts and consultants in addition to industry specific packaging firms among the others.
The first international plastic industry exhibition of Afghanistan is scheduled to convene in Uranus Palace of Kabul from May 2-5, 2017.”
But, now that the exhibition is opened with participation of 95 companies from only 7 countries “Afghanistan (38), Iran (45), India (1), China (2), Pakistan (6), Turkey (3) and Taiwan(1)”, many of those company heads who were promised for the government’s helps are not able to find the responsible bodies at the exhibition area.
In order to have a fair judgment, about the questions at the news lead, let us wait for a couple of days, when we have the possibility to speek safely with our correspondent in Kabul!
According to the latest figures that we have received, Iran with 44 companies at the exhibition (6 companies more than the guest country), has occupied the biggest possible area at this exhibition.
