If everything goes well, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), which has been dilly dallying in deciding about the purchase of Pakistan Automated Customs Computerised System (PaCCS) for last many months, has now finally expressed its desire to acquire the automated system in 60 days.
According to sources, the FBR delegation, which visited Dubai last week for talks with Kuwait-based Agility, owner of PaCCS, expressed its satisfaction on the performance and quality of service delivering PaCCS for past six years. During negotiations, the FBR said that it had decided to continue with PaCCS at all international terminals, but the process might take 60 days, or so, to come to logical conclusion.
Sources said that though the revenue body and Agility both agreed on the sale-purchase of the automated solution, the FBR demanded 60 days from Agility to determine the value of PaCCS, after getting opinion from technical experts at the Customs House. At the beginning of last week , a four-member delegation, including FBR Chairman Salman Siddique, accompanied by Jawad Awais Agha, Nisar Ahmad and Shaukat Ali, met high officials of Agility in Dubai to resolve the PaCCS issue.
One of the Collectors using PaCCS said the revenue body has been running the system for last six years at the country's leading container terminals, which showed their confidence in the performance of the system. The FBR will continuously pay service charges of $1.3 million every month to Agility till finalisation of the deal.
Agility has demanded $62 million to sell the system. This includes six years of services rendered to the national exchequer. Sources aid that the system proved its effectiveness by generating huge revenues every day. Recently, it was made public that PaCCS has the capacity to generate Rs 300 million revenues daily. It has also shown higher volume of cargo, both in imports and exports. According to rough estimates, customs department generates over Rs 1.75 billion daily.
Needless to mention, the PaCCS is a paperless web-enabled environment for submitting Goods Declarations and self-assessment of customs dues. The foolproof system has proved its effectiveness, and contributed towards transparency. In 2005, Agility had launched a pilot PaCCS software project for Pakistan on the directives of the then Chairman of FBR, Abdullah Yousaf, to automate the clearances of goods declarations and to cut the roots of corruption from customs offices.