'Report on the Quetta-Seistan [Sistan] Trade Route, for the year 1900-1901' [‎5r] (9/32)

APPENDIX.
-4-
REPORT
ON THE
QUETTA-SEISTAN TRADE ROUTE,
FOE THE YEAR
1900 - 1901 .
T HE trade returns * for the past year record a satisfactory advance on those
for the preceding year. In 1899-1900 the export and import trade
through Nushki amounted, in value, to Rs. 12,35,411, an advance of Rs. 5,07 229
on the total of Rs. 7,28,082 reached in the year 1898-99. The value’of’the
trade which passed through Nushki during the year under review was
Rs. 15,34,452, giving an advance for the year of Rs. 3,99,041. The figures
quoted show that trade through Nushki has doubled in volume in two years, a
result which cannot fail to he considered satisfactory.
2. I take this opportunity of explaining, as I have done in previous reports,
that the figures noted include all trade which passed through Nushki, in the
course of the year, irrespective of its destination. While the more important
trade through Nushki passes to Southern Khorasan, that is to say, to Persia, vet
some goods are absorbed, on their arrival in Nushki, by local traders, who either
dispose of them in the country around, or despatch them across the frontier into
Shorawak, Garmsel, Registan or Persian Baluchistan. The local t trade between
Nushki and the three trans-frontier Afghan districts named is not thriving:
indeed, I regret to say that many of the traders, who were interested in this
trade, have recently closed their shops and have left Nushki.
3. Two years ago I reported that the Kandahar authorities had picketed the
wells in the Registan in order to prevent caravans evading payment of the
heavy duties which have been imposed by His Highness the Amir. This mea
sure did not prove wholly effective, and last year saw it supplemented by a com
plete system of preventive posts, which have been stationed at carefully selected
points along the Nushki-Shorawak and Nushki-Registan frontiers. It is under
stood that it is His Highness the Amir’s intention to extend this chain o f posts
in the near future to Koh-i-Malik Siah. While the Afghans will always find it
difficult to check smuggling along so open a frontier as that which forms the
northern boundary of the Chagai and Nushki districts, among Baluch, too, who
are in close sympathy with one another, yet the vicissitudes to which the’ local
Afghan trade through Nushki is exposed are so many and so great that I fear
that every successive year will show a decline in the returns of this trade.
4. Ihe instructions} transmitted me on the subject of showing the destina
tion of exports reached me too late in the year to permit me to make the neces
sary alterations in my trade returns. The instructions have, however, been
carefully noted, and the coming year’s returns will be prepared in accordance
with them.
. connection with the preparation of these trade returns I desire to
point out how necessary it has now become to employ and pay a special official
in Nushki for the sole duty of registering trade. Under present arrangements the
* Published in Gazette of India, dated the 9th November 1901.
I ^ Cal tfa S ^ dL f Crentiate between ^ and trade with Herat which passes through Seistan.—P. W.
Fotei^ ^ ‘ <> ““ letter No. 403, dated the 21st September 1900, to the