KARACHI: Additional Director of the Directorate General of Transit Trade Mona Mehfooz says this year the theme for international Customs Day is “data analysis” with the slogan of “Data Analysis for Effective Border Management”.
She said that the recent important developments involving transit and economic corridors in the region have opened up opportunities and challenges for Pakistan. Our land border stations and sea ports have immense potential as transit corridor and as regional transit hub. Pakistan’s accession to TIR convention in 2015 is expected to increase the movement of international cargo using the transit corridor of Pakistan. In view of this, Federal Board of Revenue has notified four land custom stations of Taftan, Sost, Chaman, Torkhum and Karachi and Gwadar seaports for TIR operations through SRO 127(I)/2016 dated February 15th 2016.
An important component of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is movement of Chinese cargo destined for various export destinations using the transit trade facilities of Pakistan. Oil and Gas agreements such as TAPI (Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) and IPI (Iran, Pakistan, India) are expected to make Pakistan a transit hub for movement of energy resources in the region. In future, Pakistan has the potential to play avital role in supporting energy supply of the two big neighboring economies of China and India. In 2010 Pakistan joined CAREC.Pakistan’s road network is connected to CAREC Corridor 5, which opens a vital trading link between landlocked Central Asian nations and the country’s warm water ports of Gwadar and Karachi, on the Arabian Sea. The GOP/ADB funded project of Integrated Transit Trade Management System (ITTMS) has been launched that aims to improve trade facilitation at key border crossing points.
Pakistan’s main transit partner is land locked Afghanistan to whom Pakistan is extending the facility of transit under APTTA 2011. APTTA 2011 also envisages the expansion to South Asia and Central Asia.The Agreement provides Pakistan with access to all countries bordering Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been granted access to China via the Sost/Tashkurgan border point and to India via the Wagah border point on principle of reciprocity.
Pakistan shares a complex physical border landscape especially with Afghanistan. A 2,430km border with several passes and transit points connects the two countries. This lengthy and porous border makes border management a challenging task for the border agencies as there are deep cultural and economic links between people that involve regular cross border movement of goods and people. This also opens avenues for illegal immigration and illegal flow of goods. Due to security situation at borders there are also often abrupt border closures and delayed border crossing
In presence of these opportunities and challenges, Custom officers in transit trade look for solid decision support tools to ensure safe transit of goods from entry into Pakistan to enroute movement through the territory of Pakistan till the crossing of the border. Despite the fact that the jurisdiction of the Directorate General of Transit Trade stretches across the country, there are lots of infrastructural and structural weaknesses that create operational handicaps for the transit trade officers such as lack of modernized trucking industry and Road & high way networks, lack of inter and intra agency intelligence sharing mechanism, lack of anti-smuggling powers, absence of Border enforcement functions and shortage of staff and resources .In this scenario, Data analysis becomes one of the main decision support tool available to Custom Officers in Transit Directorates. Many important decisions are based on data analysis.
