ISLAMABAD: Following the instructions of Collector Zulfiqar Ali, the customs staff deputed at New Islamabad International Airport (NIIA) has already started feeding data of every passenger traveling abroad from Pakistan to curb money laundering.
Additional Collector Nisar Phularwal, during an exclusive interview with Customs Today, said that customs staff is still facing various problems at NIIA. He added that few months are required by the staff to adopt new routines at new premises of NIIA.
The additional collector said that the Collectorate feeding data registering because Pakistan has been put in gray list of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) due to money laundering. He added that Islamabad Customs shared its feeding data of passengers with Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigation Islamabad upon their request before attending the FATF meeting.
He said that the feeding data will help the customs department measure the traveling history that how many visits a passenger did in a year as well as how much money he kept during his visits in a year. He added that these actions has been taken because to curb money laundering so a good message could be delivered to financing watchdogs that Pakistan is seriously working to abolish the trends of money laundering within the country.
Answering to a query regarding rummaging, he said that under supervision of four superintendents of customs a new team has been formed that took part in rummaging activity.
Nisar added that all the planes are already being rummaged, adding, “we are rummaging all the air buses traveled via NIIA.”
Nisar said that Islamabad Customs officials including Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and staff of each aeroplane work together when rummage an aeroplane taken place. He said that this practice will prevent any attempt of smuggling of narcotic through NIIA to foreign countries as happened in past.
He said that Electronic Data Exchange (EDE) had been started here at Air Freight Unit (AFU) now “we can check Free Trade Agreement (FTA) of any company whenever we needed, we have fully access to data of any consignee who imported any consignment via AFU Islamabad.”
Answering to another query regarding revenue position, he said: “We have already surplus revenue collection targets under all heads and hopefully we will surpass the assigned revenue collection target for Financial Year (FY) 2017-18.”
He added that AFU faced shortfall under head of Customs Duty (CD) during month of May FY17-18 because the IT companies i.e. Telenor, Ufone, Jazz and China Mobile Company shifted their businesses from AFU Islamabad to other destinations due to different causes. He said that in beginning of current month of June FY17-18, all the companies who had shifted their businesses to other destinations have rejoined AFU Islamabad.
