For 400 years, the craftsmen and traders of Peshawar’s jewelry bazaar have cut, polished, set and haggled over precious gems dug from the rugged mountains of northwest Pakistan.
Pakistan’s gem and jewelry exports have boomed in recent years, but Taliban violence, a crippling power crisis and outdated production methods are taking their toll in Peshawar, where traders say business has slumped alarmingly in the past 12 months.
As dusk settles over Peshawar — the gateway to Pakistan’s lawless and restive northwest — the stalls and narrow lanes of Namakmandi bazaar in the heart of the city bustle with activity.
Photo: AFP
Traders peer beadily to check the quality of emeralds, rubies and lapis lazuli, plying customers with green tea, while food sellers roam about and the aroma of spices scents the air.
Yet traders like Shehzad Sabz Ali say business is collapsing, and foreign buyers in particular have been scared off — a major problem in a sector where exports account for 95 percent of the market.
“I have been in this business for the past 25 years, but the slump that we are witnessing these days because of unrest and Talibanization is unprecedented,” he said.
The buyers from the US, Thailand, France, Germany and Dubai who once thronged the packed market are largely a thing of the past.
“The bomb blasts and suicide attacks have turned our businesses upside down, leaving us no option but to interact with our buyers through the Internet,” Ali said as employees in his small shop cut and polished delicate rose-pink kunzite stones.
Online dealing may be the thing of the moment, but traders like Ali, whose businesses have been built on generations of salesmanship and personal relationships, feel it is ineffective.
For fellow trader Sheharyar Ahmad, the solution is to hold more trade shows in Pakistan’s other cities.
“I have attended a few exhibitions in Islamabad and Lahore where foreign buyers showed great deal of interest in the stones such as emerald, ruby and sapphire,” he said.
Most of the country’s gemstones are found in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provicne, the northern Gilgit-Baltistan territory, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Balochistan Province.
The reserves of precious and semi-precious stones in the country are worth trillions, according to Peshawar-based gemologist Ilyas Ali Shah.
However, much of this potential remains untapped as the stones lie buried in the seven restive tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, where militancy and poor infrastructure have restricted access.
“Pakistan could triple its current gemstone exports if these reserves are fully tapped,” he said.
While the quality of stones from Pakistan is good and they sell well at international trade shows, Peshawar-based trader Sheharyar Ahmad said, the primitive cutting and polishing techniques are not up to international standards.
“That is why when our stones go to Thailand, they are refaceted and polished again,” he said.
Shah, who heads the Gem and Jewelry Training and Manufacturing Center in Peshawar, said the manual equipment Pakistani traders are still using did not allow the same precision and delicacy of workmanship as modern machinery.
His training center aims to bring Pakistani jewelry techniques up to date.
“Our institute has been set up to train traders in cutting and polishing of gemstones through scientific means and we have so far trained over 1,000 students in Peshawar,” he said.
The government-run Pakistan Gems and Jewelry Development Co is also trying to raise gemstone workers’ skill levels to allow the country to better compete with the likes of the industries in Thailand and India.
Pakistani gem and jewelry exports have risen enormously in recent years to stand at US$1.3 billion last year and department general manager Khalid Aziz said it aims to raise that figure to US$1.7 billion by 2017.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last