KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is soon going to introduce online payment of all duty and taxes at customs stage by linking banks with the auto-clearance Web Based One Customs (WeBOC) system. Under a well-focused plan the FBR intends to make entire import and export trade paperless at customs stage which will not only help plug in revenue leakages and check corruption but also make entire process fast and efficient.
Collector Customs Syed Tanvir Ahmed, who is looking after WeBOC system, told Dawn that presently there was only one bank account of the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) at Customs House where entire tax and duties were manually paid by trade and industry.
He further said that arrangements had been completed to initially bring in around 1,000 NBP branches for online payments and in next stage branches of other banks would also be inducted in the system.
The collector explained that online payments of duty and taxes would enable trade and industry to make payments 24/7 eliminating the growing risk of cash handling.
Similarly, he said export cases pertaining to Duty and Taxes Remission on Exports (DTRE) and Form “S” scheme available to exporters and industrialists will also put under the system for auto clearance under the WeBOC.
Tanvir said some of these schemes, which had been working under Pakistan Automation Customs Clearance System (PaCCS), were now being gradually rolled out through WeBOC by inducting different modules.
Responding to a question, the collector said undoubtedly the risk management system (RMS) of WeBOC was initially rigid and conservative which had now been relaxed to some extent to avoid congestion at container terminals.
“However it is necessary that the RMS of any auto-clearance system should be conservative to protect revenue.” He hoped that once the terminal operators upgrade their systems and bring in more machinery required for grounding of containers the RMS may be reverted back to its original status.
Contrary to RMS of PaCCS which was daily marking around 100 to 125 containers for physical examination, the WeBOC RMS initially marked around 200 boxes per day for physical examination, thereby creating backlog of un-cleared containers at the terminals.
The collector admitted that after reviewing and making some adjustments in the RMS the number of boxes marked by the system for physical examination had been reduced.
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