International Customs Day: Message From Wajid Ali Director General, Reforms & Automation, Karachi

TEXT: This year the International Customs Day on 26.01.2021 is dedicated to the contribution of Customs towards bolstering recovery, renewal and resilience for a sustainable supply chain. This year, the ICD comes at a challenging time, where the world is combatting the second wave of a deadly covid-19 pandemic. This slogan enhances the responsibility of customs as a global fraternity during these testing times when the whole world activities came to a standstill Customs being an essential service has successfully ensured service delivery during the covid-19 pandemic through online collection of leviable duties, paperless clearances, promoting and facilitating legitimate imports and exports and ensuring uninterrupted cross-border movement of goods while safeguarding the safety and health of its officers, officials and all the stake holders. This year’s slogan is a welcome recognition of Customs’ contribution towards maintenance of a sustainable supply chain during covid-19 pandemic performing the task of protecting the economic borders of the country, for facilitation of legitimate trade and safeguarding the economic interests of its industrialists, investors, the common man and all stake holders.

The relentless efforts by the Directorate General of Reforms and Automation, Karachi in simplifying and automating customs processing in WeBOC has contributed a great deal in improving Pakistan’s rankings in Trading Across Borders Index from 142nd to 111th and similarly in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index from 136th to 108th. We begin 2021 with a resolve to further improve Customs’ business processes through automation while ensuring transparency and simplification.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021