Border management, anti-smuggling drive lead to Rs1.3b seizures

PESHAWAR: Following the border management steps under the National Action Plan (NAP), the anti-smuggling measures have been intensified in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and smuggled items worth Rs1.33 billion have been seized in the province during the first six months of the current financial year.

The document received from the Model Collectorate of Customs (MCC) Peshawar has shown an increase of Rs 681.7 million in the value of smuggled goods seized during the corresponding period (July-December) of the previous financial year (2015-16).

An MCC official, who requested not be named, told The News on Thursday that soon after announcement o the NAP the collector MCC directed the authorities to review working, including anti-smuggling mechanism, in the light of the measures laid down in the NAP.He said the MCC during the last quarter of the previous fiscal lined up its anti-smuggling squads and intensified efforts to plug each and every point to block the way of contraband, arms and ammunition into the province. “These squads and MCC units at the border crossings and elsewhere in the province seized smuggled items worth Rs 1,336 million,” the official said.

The items seized included vehicles, gold, currency, auto-spares, cigarettes, electronic goods, antiques, medicines and mobile phones.The Customs teams seized 130 non-custom-paid (NCP) vehicles worth Rs192.850 million during the July-December quarters of the fiscal while during the corresponding period of the last financial year 87 such vehicles worth Rs163 million were seized.

The cloth worth Rs324 million was seized during the period beside foreign currency of Rs 47 million, gold valued at Rs 71 million and tea worth  Rs33.8 million.The working of anti-smuggling units was reviewed and improved accordingly to correspond with the efforts for border management as proposed in the NAP, the MCC official added.

The official informed that recently a crucial meeting was held at the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) where the MCC was represented by its collector, Qurban Ali Khan, to take up the anti-smuggling mechanism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the light of the NAP.