LAHORE: Collector Customs Junaid Akram said on Tuesday that enforcement mechanism has been restructured and further strengthened to weed out the menace of smuggling that is hitting hard the government revenues and the genuine businessmen.
Speaking here at Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he said the department of Customs Preventive was quite aware of the fact that domestic industry was under tremendous pressure because of unchecked smuggled goods. He said that smuggling was not only causing revenue losses to the exchequer but was also creating law and order situation and jacking up the graph of unemployment.
He said the very objective of restructuring of the enforcement mechanism was to ensure relief to the genuine businessmen that in no way can compete with smuggled items. While acknowledging delays in the newly introduced WEBOC system at Lahore Airport, the Additional Collector Customs Mukram Ja said that new computers and other related equipment was being installed this month to enhance the efficiency of the system.
On this occasion, the LCCI President Farooq Iftikhar said that smuggling was one of the main reasons behind low revenue collection phenomenon therefore an iron hand was needed to curb this evil.
He said that smuggling of the Plastic moulding compound from Iran by land route was not only causing a loss of Rs 25 billion annually to the exchequer but also causing closure of plastic businesses in the country. He said that authorities should immediately ban import of Polyethene and Polyproplene from Iran via land route from any border of Pakistan as at present these products were available in the local market below the imported price that was very damaging for the local businessmen.
He said that in order to improve the day to day working at the Wagha Border port, the Ministry of Commerce constituted a committee under the headship of Customs Collector comprising members from NLC, Rangers, National Bank of Pakistan, TDAP and an LCCI nominee. Unfortunately for the last 6 months no meeting has been called.
LCCI Vice President Mian Abuzar Shad said that it came into the notice of the Lahore Chamber that some people were using fake LCCI Certificate of Origin, therefore, the Customs department should look into the issue and should not accept the photocopy of the certificate. He said that this had caused a huge financial loss to the LCCI.
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