KARACHI, Feb 6: The absence of a clear-cut criterion for consignments picked for rigorous inspection seems to be creating discontent amongst importers.

Importers complain of the lack of transparency in selection of imported goods for auto clearance through Customs Administrative Reforms (Care) and for manual clearance. Importers are said to be suffering by paying huge amounts towards demurrage and detention charges for delays for no fault on their part.

It takes only six minutes to get the imported goods cleared through Care but consignments selected for manual examination are detained without any reason by the customs authorities and takes a lot of time for their examination, they added.

They complain that there are no hard and fast rules for the selection of consignments, which are going to be manually assessed and examined.

The Pakistan Automated Customs Clearance System (PACCS) was created for expeditious and swift clearance of imported consignments in order to facilitate trade in terms of demurrage and detention charges and keep ports free from congestion.

For efficient and quick working of the system an amendment was also effected in section 79 of the Customs Act 1969 whereby the importers or owners of imported goods were made responsible for filing the Goods Declaration (GDs) within 15 days of the landing of such goods failing which they will have to pay Rs15,000 as fine.

With the emergence of PACCS mechanism the authorities made high claims that the system would be more efficient and time-saving and would result in clearance of consignments in corruption free environment and ensure speedy clearance in lesser time than the Appraisement Collectorate and other collectorates.

Importers accuse that some of the customs officials and system operators temper with the computers and manipulate selection of goods for examination or for auto clearance under the Care system.

They demand that detailed scrutiny of this system be carried out with the help of IT experts for the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) to understand as to how the country was being fleeced of revenue.

Once consignments are selected for manual assessment their clearance depends on the discretion of the appraisement officer on how to deal with the importer. He may be good enough to clear the goods at this stage or may sent them for examination, which adds to the woes of importer not in term of corruption alone but also in term of long delays.

In the past when all the imported goods were handled manually by customs officials there was some check as each importer knew at what value the goods of similar nature were cleared by a customs officer. This indirectly helped to contain corruption to some extent.

Citing an example Syed Amjad Ali Shah, an importer of used trucks, said that he filed GDs on December 6, 2006 within the stipulated time and deposited duty and taxes accordingly as per requirement of the system. But as the trucks were not cleared by the Care he appeared before Azhar Merchant, deputy collector of customs MCC.

During the review the assessment made by the customs assessing officer was found to be on higher side. However, the deputy collector did rectify the higher value of the trucks but unfortunately, even after paying CVT and fulfilling other conditions the trucks were not cleared by the customs.

As a result of long delay huge amount has to be paid towards demurrage and detention charges to the terminal operator, he added.Mr Shah said that there were many cases of long delays in clearance of imported goods through manual examination and importers are at a loss as to whom they should approach.