Economists on Tuesday hailed the Chabahar agreement between Afghanistan, India and Iran and said it was a landmark accord which will leverage economic and commercial interactions between the Asian nations.

They said the accord will change Afghanistan into a transit hub for the region.

They said once the port is operational, Pakistan will lose a major part of its business between Afghanistan, India and the central Asian countries. They also said it will provide the shortest route for Afghanistan to transfer its trade products to Indian markets.

Economists believe that the agreement will also help Afghanistan increase its national revenue and to revive its transit reputation.

On May 23, a trilateral agreement on developing the Chabahar port was signed after a meeting between India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in the Iranian capital Tehran.

Economic analysts say that Chabahar is the best alternative to Pakistan's Karachi port.

They said that Pakistan's deliberate attempts at creating obstacles for the Afghan business community and Indian businessmen forced them to consider the Chabahar port option.

"One of the facilities that we will have in Chabahar port is that we can export our agricultural products to one of the world's biggest markets which is India. It means that after this our trucks will not be stopped at the borders and those [perishable] products will not be held up at borders for unknown reasons," Qais Mohammad, an economic analyst said.

"It's needed that government should provide security for the highway which the products will be transported on [to Chabahar port] and we can also increase the importance of this port by providing other facilities," another economic analyst, Bakht Mohammad Bakhtiyar, said.