KARACHI: The Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI) organised an awareness session on Pakistan Single Window (PSW) with a view to raise technical awareness about the overall operations of this important facility and provide an opportunity to the participants of the session to better understand the system, highlight issues and get adequate response along with first-hand information from the relevant officers of Pakistan Customs.
The session, which was steered by Chief Domain Officer/ Additional Collector Customs Naveed Abbas Memon and simultaneously conducted through online zoom facility, was attended by President KCCI Muhammad Idrees, Senior Vice President Abdul Rehman Naqi, Vice President Qazi Zahid Hussain, Chairman Customs & Valuations Subcommittee Muhammad Arif Lakhani, Former Senior Vice President Muhammad Ibrahim Kasumbi, Former Vice President Nasir Mehmood, KCCI Managing Committee and General Body Members in addition to immense participation of more than 250 people from all over the country including Sialkot, Lahore, Islamabad and Faisalabad who joined the meeting via zoom facility.
Speaking on the occasion, chief domain officer Naveed Abbas Memon stated that PSW portal has been designed to fully facilitate traders by reducing time, cost and complexity in cross border trade in addition to improving the quality of experience for all stakeholders with primary focus on ease of doing business.
He said it also supports other government departments in adopting an Integrated Risk Management (IRM) approach for efficient enforcement of trade related controls.
KCCI president Muhammad Idrees appreciated the PSW initiative introduced by the government which would certainly help in minimizing human interaction and reduce chances of harassment and corruption. However, he stressed that the need to promptly rectify numerous glitches in the system and simplify procedures in order to achieve the prime objective of PSW facility which was to ensure ease of doing business.
He said it was heartening to see that PSW promotes ease of doing business by maintaining collaboration with 74 different public sector entities involved in regulation of cross border trade of Pakistan and digitalizing the processes related to importers, exporters, customs house agents, freight forwarders, shipping companies and transporters etc. but there was a room for further improving the system so that it could be brought at par with international standards.
He was of the view that fully functional and totally flawless operations of PSW would also enable Pakistan to achieve compliance with WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement besides helping Pakistan to unlock its potential in becoming a hub for trade.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022