Islamabad – July 8, 2025 – In a decisive move to boost port efficiency and reduce trade bottlenecks, the Government of Pakistan has launched a comprehensive initiative to cut container dwell time at seaports by a staggering 70%.
(more…)Tag: consignment clearance
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FBR devises mechanism for release of consignments stuck-up at Karachi ports
ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Tuesday devised a mechanism for release of imported goods of FATA/PATA residents stuck-up at Karachi ports.
A meeting was held under the Chairmanship of the FBR chairman with Inland Revenue-Operations and Customs Operations Wings to sort out the issues of imported goods of FATA/PATA residents stuck-up at Karachi Ports, Consumption/Installation Certificates, Postdated Cheques and Exemption Certificates under Section 148 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2021.
After thorough deliberations between the Chairman, Member (IR-Operations) and Member (Customs-Operations) following mechanism was devised for the release of consignments of FATA/PATA residents stuck-up at the Karachi Ports:-
The stuck-up containers are to be released by Customs authorities against Postdated Cheques (PDCs) and sent to their destination (FATA/PATA) under standard tracker mechanism.
The Collector Customs (Enforcement & Compliance), Peshawar, will issue detention orders of the raw materials effective from day the consignment reaches the manufacturing premise of importers.
The importer/manufacturer will be responsible to take the import documents alongwith detention order to the CIR concerned, RTO, Peshawar and make arrangements to have the manufacturing premises/raw material/machinery/goods imported verified.
The CIR concerned, RTO, Peshawar will be liable to verify/undertake physical visit as conducted by the importer/manufacturer to the manufacturing premises where the goods are kept under detention, and allow the raw material to be consumed/utilized in writing.
The CIR, concerned, RTO, Peshawar will ensure the monthly stock-taking of the raw materials to consumed in the production of manufactured goods by these manufacturing units. This stock-taking will facilitate in issuance of the
Consumption Certificate under S.No.151 of the Sixth Schedule of the Sales Tax Act, 1990.
The residents of FATA/PATA will apply for tax exemption certificates under section 159 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 for the import of raw material/machinery in light of the Honorable Peshawar High Court, Mingora Bench, (Dara-ul-Qaza), Swat’s decision dated 24.11.2020.
Commissioner Corporate, RTO, Peshawar and Collector Customs (Enforcement & Compliance), Peshawar would keep a close liaison to successfully implement the laid down mechanism.
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Importers wait issuance of concessionary SRO for consignment clearance
KARACHI: Around 500 containers of commodities have been stuck up at ports as importers are waiting issuance of concessionary SRO for customs clearance.
“The government on March 30, 2020 decided on to bring advance tax on import of pulses to zero from two per cent and exemption of two per cent additional customs duty on oil seeds and palm oil imports,” Patron in Chief, Karachi Wholesalers Grocers Association (KWGA), Anis Majeed said in a statement on Tuesday.
Majeed said that the government had reduced 2 percent advance income tax on Pulses and 2 percent additional duty on edible oil and seeds for alleviating the adverse impact of Covid-19 and lockdown.
“Our members are waiting for the SRO so that they can get duty relief on pulses imports,” he pointed out
KWGA chief further said he has taken up the matter with Chief Collector of Customs but the customs officer unable to respond positively.
“A number of importers are confused whether to clear their consignments of pulses while few of them are trying to clear their goods as they believe that not releasing pulses may create shortage in the markets at a time when buying of pulses and other essential items have surged sharply on rising demand from ration providers to the poor people,” he added.
He claimed that 400-500 containers of various pulses are awaiting clearance, while importers of oil seeds are also double minded as they are not clearing 32,000 tonnes of canola seed that landed at Karachi Port and another 64,000 tonnes at Port Qasim.
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Pakistan Customs launches swift consignment clearance system to improve ease of doing business
KARACHI: Pakistan Customs on Monday launched the swift consignment clearance software for improving ease of doing business and trading across the border indices of the country.
The system namely ‘WeBOC Global’ was inaugurated by Member Customs Dr Jawwad Uwais Agha at Custom house, Karachi.
He introduced the key features of the newly developed ICT system which was attended by a large number of the senior officers of Pakistan Custom and members of the WeBOC-Glo Project team.
The new version of Customs clearance system was deployed at early in the morning May 13, 2019 which has immediately replaced the previous version of WeBOC clearance system.
This will be a modern and technologically advanced version of WeBOC which is an end to end automated online goods clearance system home grown by Pakistan Customs in 2011.
With the introduction of new WeBOC system, the Custom clearance system of Pakistan will enter into the club of modern, upgraded and technologically advanced Custom clearance system of the world, the Member said.
The WeBOC-Glo in addition to new modules and functionalities will be plugging the deficiencies of earlier clearance system pointed out during the course of time in internal reviews and ICT Gap Analysis by the World Bank.
Components of Release 1.0 of the WeBOC-Glo were introduced by Iftikhar Ahmad, Collector/Convener of the project which included 13 modules and functionalities.
The major modules included:
(1) the Development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) with Terminal Operators for Export LCL Cargo, which will reduce dwell time at ports
(2) the Quota Management of Bulk Export Cargo, which will facilitate auto debiting of assigned quota,
(3) the establishment of IT interface with Ministry of Foreign Affairs for automation of Exemption Certificates,
(4) the availability of WeBOC Glo on Chrome and Edge to provide convenience to users,
(5) the enhanced Security Features, to safeguard the User IDs and relevant data of importers /exporters,
(6) the unified Screens for MIS Officers, to ensure speedy processing,
(7) the search engine for TARIFF and relevant SROs to empower users in Tariff and import/export policy information for correct filling and assessment of GDs,
(8) the update on Containers Status, to allow traders the facility to keep track of containers,
(9) Improved User Interface, aimed at making the system more user friendly and less time consuming and
(10) the Glo Insight which strengthens the statistical Scrutiny and monitoring of Customs transactions through business intelligence and data analysis tools for informed decisions making.
In addition to above, the WeBOC-Glo will be instrumental in closure of old Customs clearance system by automating areas that had remained outside its scope so far.
(1) the Export Processing Zone, whose import and export clearance along with the role and functions of EPZA have been automated for the first time,
(2) the GD Filing Without NTN, which will facilitate individual importers, Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) promoting e-Commerce in Pakistan,
(3) the Exceptional GD Filing, which caters to all scenarios where auto clearance were held up due to peculiar taxation regimes on items or specific orders of superior courts.
The team has been further instructed by Dr Agha to plan launch of Release-2of WeBOC Glo by the first week of July, 2019.
The Release-2 will include further important modules like DTRE, Bulk Exports and Exports through Courier.
With the development of these modules all the processes related to export will be fully automated which will definitely facilitate export sectors.
Release-2 will also include E-Auction Module, for auction of confiscated goods in line with modern concepts of Auction.
Oil imports contribute the major share in Imports Bill. All the processes like Import, storage, transportation and transit of Oil will also be covered in Release-2 Similarly PCA Entity based Audit module will also be part of it, which will dramatically enhance money trial analysis and be handy in detection of money laundering.
Initial work has already been done on these modules and they are under different stages of development.
Some less important modules will be launched in Release-3 by Mid September which will complete automation of all the Customs processes under WeBOC-Glo.
Earlier, Dr Jawwad Agha conceived the idea of up gradation and functionally advanced new Customs system and had put in place a two tier setup, the WeBOC-Glo Domain team and Oversight and Approval Team, in December, 2018.
In view of highly technical nature of the task officers having vast professional experience and well grounded in automated work environment were grouped together.
The team lead by Collector Dr. Iftikhar Ahmad (project team leader) included: Additional Collectors Shafqat Niazi, Sanaullah Abro, Ms Mona Mehfooz, Ali Zaman Gardezi and Deputy Collector Ms Nausheen Riaz Khan.
The project team leader said that packed and strict timeline was given to undertake the Businesses Process Re-Engineering (BPR), development of new modules and functionalities of the WeBOC Glo.
He added that the project team had to put in long hours on weekend, over and above their regular work assignments, to meet the deadlines, while Agha continuously monitored the progress and provided his full support to project team. Within short time of four months, WeBOC-Glo project team under guidance of oversight and Approval team, consisting of senior officers of Customs succeeded in accomplishing the task of development of 13 different modules and functionalities of new version.
User Acceptance Tests (UATs) with relevant stakeholders have been completed too. The PRAL’s Business Analysis and software Development Units provided able resource support and remained instrumental in the achievement.
With the launch of the WeBOC-Glo, the Customs department moves further ahead as the leading public sector organization mag use of modern technology for hassle free public service delivery.
The system ensures transparency, efficiency, professionalism and further reduces the interaction with taxpayer besides providing tech ability for future integration with artificial intelligence for RMS analysis.