QICT customs staff to discontinue PaCCS system from today: FBR issues new notification

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has given the deadline of September 22, 2011 to the customs staff at Qasim International Containers Terminal (QICT) to clear all pending consignments through PaCCS.
According to sources, the board, which had amended SRO 967(I)/2007 dated September 20, 2007 through notification issued on September 17, 2011 and excluded PaCCS system for the clearance of all containerised cargo routed through QICT, issued another notification late on Tuesday, September 20, to avoid legal action.
Sources said that after the deadline (September 22, 2011) , all containerised cargo routed through QICT, which was earlier to come under the jurisdiction of PaCCS system, would be transferred to Web Based One Custom (WeBOC). They said that the decision to transfer the jurisdictional powers of PaCCS to WeBOC has proved that the recent talks between the FBR and Agility Logistics over purchasing issue of PaCCS remained indecisive.
They said that the revenue body has planned to exercise the same practice adopted at the time of PaCCS launch, adding that the PaCCS, which started functioning on March, 2005 as pilot project, was later extended to all ports without any formal agreement.
Similarly, the authority is trying to exercise the aforesaid approach in case of WeBOC as the system, which has initially started working at QICT, would later be expanded to all other ports without taking stakeholders on board. When contacted, President of Karachi Custom Agents Association (KCAA), Younus Somroo, urged the board to revisit its decision, saying that the PaCCS clearance system should be continued in order to facilitate stakeholders at maximum.
He said that around 3500 import containers and 500 export containers were cleared through PaCCS everyday. Therefore, this abrupt decision to replace PaCCS with WeBOC has caused chaos at terminal besides providing severe financial shocks to the business fraternity in terms of demurrage and detection charges. Meanwhile, Chairman of Pakistan Economic Forum (PEF), Arshad Jamal, termed issuance of these two notifications by the FBR regarding the replacement of PaCCS with WeBOC at QICT as illegal. He said the PEF has rejected the decision to exclude PaCCS from the clearance of all containerised cargo at QICT as the same was made unilaterally.
He said the amendments in Customs Act through SRO pertaining to the transfer of jurisdictional powers of PaCCS to WeBOC appeared illegal, although the board had asked the software developer for a period of two months more to settle the purchasing issue of the automated software. When this scribe made an attempt to discuss this issue with Chairman of FBR and Member Customs, the cell phones of both officials remained switched off for whole day.