ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue Chairman Javed Ghani on Friday inaugurated Pakistan Single Window Company (PSWC) as part of compliance with the trade facilitation agreement of the World Trade Organisation.

The PSWC was rolled out almost a year before its deadline of June 2022 set under the World Trade Organisation’s trade facilitation agreement.

An official announcement said that the FBR chairman also appreciated Pakistan Customs for reducing the project cost from initial estimates of $163 million to $67m through indigenous development effort.

Prime Minister Imran Khan had tasked Customs to complete this highly transformational project for reducing time, cost and complication while ensuring better compliances with cross-border trade regulations. To ensure that this new system is timely implemented and sustainably maintained, the PSWC has been operationalised by FBR.

The PSWC is now enabling the government to maintain complete ownership of this mission-critical system of strategic national importance as it would handle entire cross-border trade, related logistics and financial transactions.

Member Customs Operation Tariq Huda stated on the occasion that Custom Administration was leveraging its expertise in automation for PSWC to support a wide array of other public and private sector entities involved in the regulation of imports, exports and transit trade.

The ongoing digitisation of related public sector entities under this project will substantially improve their efficiency.

PSWC is instrumental in Pakistan becoming a preferred route for international transit and transshipment besides it will help integrate upcoming national, regional and global single window systems.

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2021