CCTV cameras to monitor cigarette production: CBR step to check excise duty evasion

The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) is making necessary arrangements for installing close circuit television (CCTV) cameras outside the cigarette factories across the country to effectively monitor their actual production for the calculation of excise duty.
Sources said on Thursday that the board is planing to install CCTV at the gates of 10-12 cigarette factories for 24 hour online monitoring of the clearances made from the factory gates. The CCTV equipment will be installed at all the big as well as small units located in Pakistan and a tender notice would soon be floated in this regard. The monitoring will help the authorities to ascertain the actual number of vehicles cleared from the factory gates. It would also guide the department to calculate the actual production made by these manufacturers.
No CCVT would be installed within the factory premises and only monitoring would be done through the use of the latest technology without disturbing the manufacturing process. However, each and every stage of clearance would be monitored.
The sources said that full capacity of the installed machines at the small cigarette manufacturing units would also give a clear picture about their actual production. There are apprehensions about the capacity of the machines as compared to their declared production at these units. The CCTV is a sort of check on the small cigarette manufacturing units. Globally, tax authorities hire the services of firms having technical expertise to monitor the production and tax payment on products such as cigarettes through sophisticated tracking systems.