KARACHI: China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is journey towards economic regionalization in the globalized world.
This will deepen and broaden economic links between Pakistan and China and will surly leave a positive impact on other countries of the region. Through CPEC, a collection of projects of $46 billion, are currently underway in Pakistan.
Reportedly, almost 80% of China’s oil is currently transported from Strait of Malacca to Shanghai, (distance is almost 16,000 km and takes 2-3 months), with Gwadar becoming operational, the distance would reduce to less than 5,000 km. Besides other projects, if all goes well and on schedule, of the 21 agreements on energy– including gas, coal and solar energy– 14 will be able to provide up to 10,400 megawatts (MW) of energy by March 2018. In addition to a number of projects, huge transit cargo is also expected to be transported through Pakistan and a number special economic and free zones are planned to be established under CPEC.
The success of CPEC is directly proportional to three factors viz: (a) security arrangements, (b) infrastructural development and (c) smooth e-based Customs operations. Whereas, a number of initiatives are being taken, and proposed to be taken, on two fronts viz: security and infrastructure, but Customs operations, have hitherto been given little thought.
A number of projects, ranging from energy to development of infrastructure, have been carved under CPEC. In order to set up and run these projects, massive imports will be made. Such importation will require expedited clearances, monitoring, and tracking in order to keep an auditable trail, so that untoward incidents and mishaps, which my jeopardize CPEC, are avoided. Besides, transit cargo will be transported from and to China, which needs Customs facilitation as well as monitoring both enroute and entry/exit stations. CPEC also envisages establishment of export processing zones, special economic zones and free zones. This requires door-step Customs facilitation to ensure swift clearances of goods without any pilferages. More importantly, the duty/tax free goods will be transported across Pakistan, which needs en-route monitoring so that the same are not pilfered en-route, jeopardizing the very essence of CPEC. Moreover, any smuggling/pilferage of Chinese goods en-route will have direct and serious repercussions on Pakistani industry and duty paid goods.
A case in hand is Afghan Transit trade cargo. It used to suffer from different infirmities which kept on hindering its smooth operations. These issues ranged from mis-declarations, delays, isolated and partial e-monitoring, en-route pilferages, smuggling etc. A number of adhoc arrangements such as verifications of cross border certificates, random examinations at port of entry and enhancement of anti-smuggling operations etc were made, but desired results could not be fetched.
