KARACHI: Duties and taxes collection at the Model Customs Collectorate of PaCCS recorded a noticeable increase after the introduction of the Web-Based Auto Clearance (Weboc).
During the first eight months (July to Feb) of the current fiscal year, customs duty collection recorded an increase of over 20 per cent at the collectorate after Pakistan Computerised Customs System (PaCCS) was replaced with Weboc), official sources said.
According to official figures, customs duty collection during July-Feb stood at Rs35.833 billion as against Rs29.665 billion recorded in the same period last year, showing 20.79 per cent growth in collection.
Sales tax collection at customs stage registered growth of 39.91 per cent at Rs52.355 billion compared to Rs37.420 billion collected in the corresponding period last year.
Collection of advanced income tax (withholding tax) at customs stage also registered growth of 43.47 per cent at Rs17.983 billion as against Rs12.534 billion in the corresponding period last year.
Growth in duty and taxes collection could partly be attributed to higher imports. However, revenue collection growth stood much higher during the period under review.
Quantum of imports during July-Feb increased by 9.51 per cent at Rs518.563 billion from Rs473.522 billion recorded in the corresponding period last year.
Customs sources said that Weboc made a debut with stringent parameters of auto clearance by putting 65 per cent imports under complete examination and 35 per cent under variants, giving choice for auto or manual clearance.
However, in due course Weboc system has been relaxed and presently 17 per cent of import cargo is being cleared without examination (green channel), 64 per cent based on variant or choice of customs official (yellow channel) and 19 per cent on complete examination or known as red channel.
The Risk Management System (RMS) of the Weboc has been in place since day one and initially it threw more cargo (containers) for physical examination at three container terminals, but gradually declined as importers’ profile developed in the system.
The system in the next couple of months would be further relaxed by increasing auto-clearance of cargo or under green channel at 45 per cent, 40 per cent under yellow channel and only 5 per cent or under red channel for complete examination.
As a safety measure, the system at random would pick up some cargo for full examination from green channel and this task has been given to Research and Development Cell specially set up to work as a watchdog, sources added.
The R&D cell in a short period of one month has detected 33 cases of under-invoicing yielding around Rs2.37 million in revenue.
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