KARACHI: The MCC Port Mohammad Bin Qasim has forwarded the 2nd draft of Import Manual to Chief Collector Appraisement South for the finalization of the Manual while MCC Appraisement East and MCC Appraisement West would submit their respective draft in this week.

It is expected that by the end of February 2015, the final draft of Import Manual would be furnished to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), which will be implemented throughout Pakistan.

In September 2014, Chief Collector Appraisement South Nasir Masroor formed three Committees comprising senior officers of MCC Appraisement East, MCC Appraisement West and MCC Port Qasim.

Nasir Masroor took this initiative because the last Manual for formulated in 1969 and since then there has been even no amendment in the Manual. However, there have been drastic amendments and changes in the Customs procedures which needed to incorporated in the Import Manual.

It may be recalled that earlier Bill of Entry was filed for the clearing of goods, which then was replaced by Goods Declaration; computerized clearing system PaCCS was introduced, which then was replaced by WeBOC; advent of private terminals and respective regulations; roles of assessment have been changed a lot, similarly there has been a large-scale advancement in all aspects of Customs.

Nasir Masroor felt the urgent need of an updated Import Manual, hence he took this task and formed the committees.

Collector Appraisement West, Mohammad Saleem is the chairman of all these teams. MCC Appraisement East Committee is headed by Additional Collector Tahir Qureshi and comprise of Deputy Collectors Qasim Khokar, Rizwan Mehmood, Asim Rehman, Rizwan Bashir Klair and Mohammad Ibrahim and Assistant collector Mohammad Faisal.

MCC Appraisement West is headed by Additional Collector Azhar Merchant and comprise of Deputy/Assistant Collectors Usman Tariq, Akbar Jan, Mahvish Shah, Maryam Mehdi and Sadia Sadaf. MCC Port Qasim Committee is headed by Additional Collector Irfan Javed and comprise of Deputy/Assistant Collectors Imran Afzal Lillah, Abdul Qudoos Shaikh, Wajid Zaman, Rehan Akram, Falik Sher, Hina Gul and associated officials Saeed Soomro, Imtiaz Hussain, Maqsood Ahmed and Mohammad Junaid.

Additional Collector Preventive Shafqat Niazi and Additional Collector Shafique Latki of MCC Exports are also the part of entire exercise and provide their valuable input.

An official said that the recent reforms introduced in Pakistan Customs are unprecedented including elimination of concessionary rate from zero rating to at least 1.0 percent, SRO culture was controlled to a large extent, assessment data (90-day data) was streamlined, a large number of valuation rulings were issued, corruption was minimized, WeBOC was implemented throughout the country and now the Import Manual is now being updated.

It may be mentioned here that such Import Manuals are regularly imported but in Pakistan it is being updated after over four decades.