Pakistan Customs has proposed to establish separate Directorate General of Customs for smooth operations under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The proposal on CPEC project, which the customs enforcement Karachi forwarded to the authorities concerned, stated that massive import was expected to be taken place under CPEC and such imports would require expedited clearances, monitoring, and tracking in order to keep an auditable trail and avoid any sort of threats, which may jeopardise this game changer project.
Besides, huge volume of transit cargo is also anticipated to be transported from and to China, which will need customs facilitation and control at both the entry and exit points as well.
CPEC also envisages establishment of export processing zones/special economic zones. This requires door-step customs facilitation to ensure swift clearances of goods without any pilferages.
The customs department is of the view that it has to be more efficient to ensure en-route monitoring of duty/tax-free goods to be transported across Pakistan to avoid en-route pilferage, which will have perilous impacts on the country's economy as any such smuggling/pilferage of Chinese goods will have direct and serious repercussions on Pakistani industry and duty-paid goods.
Keeping the said backdrop in view, there is a need of handling such issues in a proactive manner, well before time and lay the groundwork for an effective customs-based organisation that can accomplish this task.
For the purpose, the separate Directorate General of Customs (CPEC) is proposed to have an effective enforcement and it would be assisted by at least five regional Directorates.
Moreover, it said that there should also be custom offices after every 200 km intervals along the routes of CPEC to ensure effective monitoring of transit trade flows.
It proposed the installation of e-tagging on vehicles carrying cargo in order to ensure swift and smooth monitoring. When a vehicle crosses the designated customs office at the pre-marked route, the data of the cargo movement would automatically enter the system showing location and brief description of goods, etc. The online movement of the cargo should be viewed by both customs offices at port of entry and exit.
The containers carrying cargo be sealed and de-sealed by customs at the relevant entry and exit points, respectively. This will ensure safety of the cargo and avoid en-route pilferage.
It said that Afghan Transit trade used to suffer from different infirmities which kept on hindering its smooth operations. These issues ranged from mis-declarations, delays, system-based monitoring, en-route pilferages, smuggling, etc. A number of ad hoc arrangements such as verifications of cross-border certificates, random examinations at port of entry and enhancement of anti-smuggling operations etc were made, but desired results could not be fetched.
Moreover, it said that the issues of Afghan Transit trade went so deep that the Supreme Court of Pakistan also took up the matter. Finally, it was decided that a dedicated Directorate General be created. Accordingly, Directorate General of Transit Trade (DGTT) was established to monitor Afghan transit on August 01, 2012.
After the establishment of DGTT, a lot of work has been done with reference to business process re-engineering and automation. WeBOC module of Transit Trade management have achieved full automation of transit cargo movement starting at clearance from three sea ports i.e. Karachi, Port Qasim and Gawadar, en-route monitoring at designated check posts and final cross over at the border stations of Torkham in KPK and Chaman in Balochistan.
Another important achievement by DGTT is Electronic Exchange of Information whereby cross border verification is done over the Internet. Moreover, dwell time has been reduced to one to two days in around 90 per cent of the transit cargo. This has also reduced unnecessary human intervention and swift clearances.
Therefore, it has been strongly recommended to the concerned authorities to establish separate Directorate General of customs for smooth operations under CPEC.