KARACHI, Jan 21: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) have agreed to set up a joint technical committee to sort out a dispute between these two government agencies over the classification of some consignments related to printers, official sources said.

“This Committee will have two officials from the Customs, two from FIA and one independent IT expert,” an official said on Monday. He said that the names of all these officials and the IT expert will be made public on Tuesday.

Well placed sources said that the disputed print machines have been imported by a well reputed business house. These machines have already been installed in National Data Registration Authority (NADRA).

The two official agencies are virtually on war-path after the FIA alleged the customs of putting these imported machines in category of those goods which carry zero rate of duty. The customs, on the other hand, contends that FIA has neither legal authority nor is technically competent to classify the imported consignments.

Lodging of the FIRs by the FIA against customs officials and subsequent rounding up of a few personnel led to lightening strike at all the customs offices in Karachi that include main office, Port Qasim, Karachi Port and Airport.

Despite the agreement between the FIA and the CBR at the higher level at Islamabad on Monday, the customs in Karachi apparently did not approve and were on two hours strike till they were persuaded by their seniors to resume their work.

The FIA has assured the CBR that they would neither pursue the matter nor would go for the arrest of those customs officials against whom FIRs have been lodged till the technical committee comes out with its finding.

However, the officers and customs staff members were not happy over the outcome of the meeting and observed a two hours partial strike on Monday.

Customs officials are of the view that the FIA holds no ground as the computer printers had been imported by a high profile trade house, and is not a ‘brief case’ import.

Furthermore, they added that these equipments are installed at NADRA and any details required in this connection could be had from the government organization.

A delegation of the staff and officers met the collector (exports) Aftab Anwer Baloch regarding their grievances. The collector assured them of his full cooperation and informed them that their genuine grievances have been communicated to the CBR, and will be redressed soon.

The collector convinced them that they would not observe strike observed in the export collectorate in the larger national interest.

Consequently, the export related work resumed normally and and about 900 shipping bills were filed and processed at various export stations and no cargo remained unattended.

The export collectorate also disbursed an amount of Rs60 million towards duty drawback/ rebate claim on Monday.