KARACHI: The Pakistan Customs has launched the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) with the Afghan Customs for the transportation of Transit Trade with the neighboring country.
The move would eliminate misuse of concessionary regime under Free Trade Agreement and the financial leakages by under-invoicing and misclassification.
The board had advised verification of suspected Certificates of Origin directly through the Commercial Missions of Pakistan abroad; discouraging mis-classification of goods to obtain concessions and extending benefits only to goods which strictly matched the description provided in respective SROs.
In respect of 13 tariff lines the import value declared before Pakistan Customs was in excess of $829 million that that recorded by China Customs as export value to Pakistan.
This is indicative of possible mis-classification of those goods which attract higher rates of duty but are cleared as goods attracting lower rates. It is mentioned here that Pakistan Customs had been working on to have EDI with China, Afghanistan and other countries so that the revenue leakages be plugged in.