FBR makes online clearance compulsory

Non-commercial cargoes

KARACHI: Tax authorities made it mandatory for all the non-commercial cargoes under the Afghan Trade Transit Agreement (ATTA) to get clearance from the customs online system, stepping up efforts to prevent incidences of misplaced consignments or pilferage in case of a manual go-ahead, officials said on Wednesday.    

The officials said the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) made online customs clearance compulsory for consignments titled diplomatic or belonging to allied forces under ATTA.

“Now, all the non-commercial cargos under the Afghan Trade Transit Agreement will be cleared through the Web-Based One Customs (WeBOC) – the online clearance portal of the Pakistan Customs – from January 25,” a customs official said. “Manual clearance will be seized.”

Sources said various incidences were reported under the manual system. Cargoes were reported missing during the transshipment. Some of them could not reach the destination or pilfered into Pakistan’s soil. 

“The pilferage incurred immense revenue losses to national exchequer as well as the local industry,” agreed an official.

An official said the online system will provide security to transit goods cleared for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) forces, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), diplomatic missions and the United Nations. 

Under the online system, a clearing agent/consignee will file goods declaration and mention the person at the other end in Afghanistan, the official said.

This will help in verifying goods and their destination.

The official said a physical presence of a person was made mandatory for obtaining user ID for Web-Based One Customs system to curb the fraud chances.

The official said the quantum of non-commercial cargos declined over the past few years after slowdown in activities of Nato-ISAF forces in Afghanistan.

Around 1,190 non-commercial consignments were cleared during 2015/16 as against 1,266 in 2014/15.

The online submission of goods declaration for non-commercial cargos will further reduce the number in the coming years.

The customs official said the improvement in anti-smuggling monitoring also prevented the bogus clearance.

The monitoring, however, raised the number of normal consignments to 61,629 in 2015/16 from 51,601 in the previous year.

The customs has almost transformed the entire clearance through Web-Based One Customs system, which is in-line with the recommendations given by Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) in its report on ‘ISAF Containers Scam’ in 2011.

“Instead of two parallel systems, the customs should establish one standard fully automated customs clearance system for the whole of Pakistan,” advised the Federal Tax Ombudsman.

The Federal Tax Ombudsman said the misuse of Afghan transit facility caused revenue losses in billions of rupees. 

“We have worked out the incidence of duties and taxes at Rs19 billion for the almost four-year period,” it added. 

Federal Tax Ombudsman said the amount appears to be on the lower side against a perception that at least 20 percent of an estimated two billion dollars worth of annual Afghan Transit Trade through Pakistan could not cross over to Afghanistan.