The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will brief Finance Minister Asad Umar on Track & Trace System in the tobacco industry as well as on revenue collection position during July-October (2018-19) and reforms on November 1, 2018 at the FBR House. It is learnt that Asad Umar will visit FBR House on November 1 (Thursday) to obtain briefing of the tax authorities on revenue collection and implementation status of the Track & Trace System in the tobacco industry.
According to the FBR, the Track and Trace System is a digital solution whereby the production of goods is digitally monitored in near real time. In order to check the evasion of duty and taxes, the revenue authorities around the world are using this system. The effectiveness of the system is a proven revenue generating measure wherever it is installed, the FBR said. The FBR said that almost in all the European and Far Eastern and even in some African countries, the system is installed to monitor the excisable goods specially liquor and tobacco.
The broader contours of the Track & Trace System revealed that the semi-visible security features shall be available to the wholesalers and distributors and the field formations shall be able to authenticate the genuineness of any tax stamp. The broader contours of the Track & Trace System also revealed that the system would ensure full government control and monitoring of production lines and systematic authentication and validation of unique codes for each manufactured products.
Track & Trace System would ensure systematic recognition and verification of stock keeping units and real time collection of production data and actualized consolidated transmission to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Track & Trace system would also ensure uninterrupted and autonomous data collection on production lines and non-intrusive equipment with no impact on production speed and production capacity. Track & Trace System would ensure encrypted communication with central database, remote monitoring of tax stamps application equipment, inspection through handheld wireless electronic devices and online activation of codes. Track & Trace system would ensure provisions of consumer authentication through smart phones, automated forecasting of tax revenues, production control reports, risk assessment, behaviour and compliance management.
Under the Track & Trace system, the database shall be designed with backup mirror sites, disaster recovery plan and redundancy for data protection and database shall collect automatically all production carrying the tax stamps, and the field inspection data.