April 09, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 2, 1429

KARACHI, April 8: The Sindh Excise and Taxation Department has sought cooperation of Customs to check bogus registration of imported vehicles.

Under a joint arrangement, the two sides will exchange data of the imported vehicles online, both at the time of import and their registration.

The agreement was reached between Chief Collector Customs Munir Qureshi and director MVR Shoaib Siddiqui.

Under the agreement, the Customs has provided an access to the MVR department to its national computer linkup, which would help the latter to verify details of imported cars from the Goods Declaration (GD) filed with the Customs.

Before registering an imported car, the MVR will check data of the vehicle with details given in the GD.

At present, verification of data given in GD is manual but measures are being taken for online verification of the GDs, which would ensure swift registration of vehicles.

The arrangements have been made after suspected cases of registration of imported vehicles, as the MVR had no system to verify whether the vehicle presented for registration has been imported legally or not.

The MVR has also sought Customs cooperation to check dual registration of imported cars in various cities. The Customs has provided an access to the MVR to enter details of registration of imported vehicles cleared by Customs in the main line computer.The arrangement that came into effect from Wednesday will provide a chance to MVR departments in other cities to check from the Customs computer status of the vehicle presented for registration.

The MVR revenue during the first nine months of the current fiscal year increased by eight per cent to Rs1.3 billion against 1.2 billion in the same period last year.

The MVR has also introduced computerised registration books for vehicles to eliminate instances of tampering with details in books earlier written with hand. The vehicle owners would now get computerised books at the time of registration of vehicles.