KARACHI: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has planned to establish a central control room and regional monitoring cells to keep a check on Afghan transit trade and trans-shipment.
Sources said that the decision of establishing control room and monitoring cells was taken due to recent incidents of cargo theft from the port. Recently, a consignment of retro cargo containing hazardous waste of NATO/ISAF reached Germany that was cleared by the MCC Port Muhammad Qasim without the actual description of goods.
The authority is facing problems in fixing the responsibility, as the collectorate cleared the consignment after complete satisfaction of true declaration.
In order to implement central and regional level monitoring, the revenue authority has invited expressions of interest to enhance the project to cover the entire spectrum of bonded cargo transportation, but not limited to Afghan forward and retro cargo, inter-port movement, trans-shipment to and from dry ports and transit cargo, from the Customs point of entry to the Customs point of exit, maintaining en route integrity of cargo on real-time basis.
Under the new tracking mechanism, the FBR would be able to have monitoring on the basis of GSM / GPRS/ Satellite communication or other modern technology on real-time basis.
