KARACHI: Pakistan customs has directed the terminals to increase the delivery time up to 10pm at airports to ensure maximum facilitation to the trade.

The decision was taken during meeting with the representatives of the terminals and All Pakistan Customs Agents Association (APCAA) at the MCC Preventive Air Freight Unit Karachi here on Wednesday.

Presiding over the meeting, an additional collector AFU Aamir Nawaz directed the terminal operators to improve the service quality and increase the delivery time up to 10pm.

Furthermore, he said that the terminals should issue tokens for collection of terminal payments up to 5pm and ensure the delivery of goods on the same day.

Meanwhile, Shahzad Ali, a representative of the terminal, said that if the custom department gave permission, they were ready to provide 24x7 service staff and informed that they were also increasing the counters and also working online payment system.

Muhammad Arshad Jamal, senior vice chairman APCAA, said that contrary to the international practices, we were still working with manual methods that led to increasing the clearance time to 48 hours.

He said that the duel time of clearance at AFU was minimum 3 days, creating serious issues for trade and urged the customs department to increase the staff at AFU to ensure maximum trade facilitation.

Later, he appreciated the positive gesture showed by the customs department to address the issues highlighted during the meeting.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021