February 27, 2016
Pakistan Customs has initiated digitising all the import transactions to check money laundering and under-invoicing and to help the central bank in improving the forex management, an official said on Friday.
Currently, imports and their subsequent Customs clearance are undertaken in a very un-organised manner and authorities have to rely on the particulars submitted by the importers. “This opens the doors for serious frauds, such as under-invoicing, fake invoices, and mis-declaration,” the official said.
“A module is being developed for web-based customs clearing system (WeBOC), which would be implemented into the system within one and a half month,” the WeBOC official said. Under-invoicing is another serious issue and the government is deprived of significant revenue every year.
The official said a lot of imports are cleared on under-declared values, but with the I-Form module, Customs will have the actual transaction value on the screen and importers will not be able to under-declare the values of their consignments.