PESHAWAR: The Customs House Peshawar will start ‘mock practice’ against the importers doing mis-declaration of their consignments found after seizure of contraband goods cleared through genuine channels.
The customs exchequer has to suffer a loss of millions of rupees each month due to fraud done by importers which also increases the chances of smuggling goods concealed in the containers imported from abroad.
Sources at the Customs House Peshawar informed Customs Today on Friday that the Customs Clearing Agents on Torkham Border have been protesting for the last four days due to which all of the customs clearance work had been stopped which is a curse for the developing country like Pakistan.
The stoppage of business with Afghanistan means that the mutual volume of the trade will further drop down and the Customs Station Torkham’s revenue collection will face further shortfall.
The system of the Web OC service was installed in 2017 at Torkham Custom’s station after the Federal Board of Revenue decided to provide one window customs service to the importers. Despite the customs clearing agents and importers to get used to Web OC service, they are continuously asking the Customs Department for taking the decision back again and allow the clearance of goods in traditional manners.
The sources further told CT that Web OC service has categorized the importers on the basis of credibility into three channels. The importers of high credibility have been allotted green channel and less checking is done there when consignments are cleared through green channel.
The importers with less credibility have been given Yellow Channel while importers of questionable credibility have been allocated red channel.
It may be remembered that less efforts are made to check the consignments cleared through yellow channel while customs staff conducts complete checking and incrustation of the goods and papers.
The high-ups in the Customs Department have assured the genuine importers that, after a complete data is provided to the customs officials, no time will be spent to take action against the culprits who facilitate smuggling of contraband goods through genuine channels by mis-declaring of their consignments.
