KARACHI: The Directorate General of Transit Trade has notified that the processing and clearance of the US/ISAF/NATO reverse transit cargo will be carried out under the web based Customs computerized system (WeBOC) from January 10, 2013.
Earlier, the Directorate had notified that the clearance of US/NATO/ISAF reverse transit cargo through WeBOC would start from December 31, 2013, but the launch date was extended due to certain operational exigencies expressed by the Project Teams (Reforms & Automation).
It may be mentioned here that Pakistan Customs launched WeBOC – the online clearance system – pilot run for commercial and non-commercial transit trade from (January 1, 2014.
In the trial run initially two goods declarations for Chaman – Torkham will be processed and for the next seven days the authorities will check the system by processing one GD on trial to identify the loopholes in the online system.
The decision to launch pilot run was taken at a meeting of Tanvir Ahmed, Project Director, Irfan Javed, Additional Director, Khawar Farid Manika, Director General Transit Trade and Javed Ghani, Director, Transit Trade to eliminate irritants in the system before official launch.
The Directorate General of Transit Trade in the last week announced the launching of WeBOC for clearance of transit trade including NATO, ISAF and goods cleared under Pakistan – Afghanistan transit trade agreement.
In a notification, it said that processing and clearance of all type of Afghan transit trade cargo, including commercial and non-commercial to and from Afghanistan will be carried out under the WeBOC from 31 and all Afghan transit goods declaration will be filed under the online clearance system by Afghan importers or their authorized Customs clearance agents.
The non-commercial cargos are those that are imported by allied forces in Afghanistan and other NGOs. The commercial cargo or imports for Afghanistan are those that are governed under Afghanistan–Pakistan Transit Trade.
The latest decision to implement WeBOC for transit trade was taken at a meeting in September, which was chaired by Tariq Bajwa, chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), to review the progress of WeBOC, especially for the consignments imported for transit.
The meeting decided that the board will develop an end-to-end electronically integrated system incorporating features for swift clearances without compromising on the integrity and security of cargo for transit trade clearance. Officials in the Customs said that under the online system, it will be easy to reconcile the goods at port of entry and port of exit at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The launching of WeBOC at East and West Wharfs, however, was not made operational and it may be delayed for next month.