Customs department is going to convene a meeting with all three terminals and trade representatives on Monday (today) to avoid expected containers backlog at ports after Eid holidays.
According to details, the issue has been raised by All Pakistan Customs Agents Association (APCAA) through a letter sent to Chief Collector Appraisement South, TDAP chief S.M Muneer and FPCCI's standing committee for customs agents.
Talking to Business Recorder, Arshad Jamal, senior vice chairman APCAA, said that S M Muneer on the request of the APCAA had directed Muhammad Zubair, Chairman standing committee for customs agents and Shakeel Dhingra to look into the matter and take appropriate measures in consultation with the APCAA to avoid trade from said anticipated financial loss.
Moreover, he said that Chief Collector Appraisement South had also taken notice of the letter and going to convene a meeting with all three terminals and the trade representatives to discuss the said issue on Monday (today).
The participants of the meeting will be Zubair Tufail, Shakil Dhingra, Arshad Jamal, Zafarullah Jaan from KICT, Khurram Aziz from PICT and Changez Niaz from QICT.
He said that trade volume had increased twofold during last couple of year as terminals which used to handle around 0.15 million containers monthly were now dealing around 0.3 million containers during a month.
Presently, around 0.15 million containers are handled at Karachi International Containers Terminal (KICT); Pakistan International Containers Terminal (PICT) despite having capacity of dealing 75 thousand containers is now handling 100 thousand containers. Similarly, around 150 thousand containers are presently parked in Qasim International Containers Terminal (QICT) with several vessels are also in a queue to offload its cargos for days, he said.
"However, terminals appear feckless to handle increasing volume of trade," he maintained.
He also feared that if the customs and terminals did not take appropriate measures during meeting to avoid expected containers backlog to be piled up during seven holidays of Eid, the port would likely to be choked for next several months.
Moreover, he said that although all three terminals had agreed to resume its 24x7 operations from the second day of Eid, Customs staff posted at ports would remain unable to mark the consignments for examination, due to bank holidays that may increase the backlog of examination consignments drastically.
Replying to a question, he said: "Customs department which receives consignments' information 72 hours before the arrival of the vessel through manifest should mark containers, moving through red channel, for examination in light of importers' profile and aforesaid information, which what he believed would not only help the importers to get intimated about the examination reports but consignments would also be cleared with no delay after Eid holidays.