PESHAWAR: Torkham Customs Station is earning monthly revenue of about of Rs 361 million and nearly Rs 4 billion annually for the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
This was stated by Deputy Collector, Torkham Customs Station, Najeeb Arjumand while briefing a group of journalists regarding trade activities at Torkham the other day.
He said that the construction of best quality road from Peshawar to Torkham has increased trade through shortest route to Afghan capital Kabul and other parts Afghanistan manifold. Before the construction of the road, a truck was taking more than three hours to reach from Peshawar to Torkham, which now take only one hour and quarter.
For speedy clearing of imported goods, Pakistan Customs, he said had recently installed WeBOC system at Torkham Stations, which is presently clearing only mineral coal and raw cotton. After the preparation of module export bound goods will also be cleared from the system later.
The manual system was taking long time and the clearing agents were used to file GD (Goods Declaration) of the export or import goods, but now they will be filing them electronically and the system will directly refer to examiner and the clearance will now take only 25 to 30 minutes.
For the arresting the problem of congestion at Torkham border, Pakistan Customs had recently shifted the clearance of Afghanistan and Central Asia bound perishable items from Customs Station Torkham to NLC operated Khyber Border Terminal (KBT) at Jamrud, Khyber Agency.
In winter, he said over 500 trucks are cleared on daily basis while in summer the number increased to 800 trucks per day. Due to high demand from 150 to 200 Afghanistan bound trucks loaded with cement are cleared at Torkham on daily basis. Imports from Afghanistan through Torkham border are included fresh, dry fruits, mineral coal and raw cotton.
