KARACHI: Customs Preventive Karachi has blocked the NTN identity of M/s Pakistan International Airline (PIA) after the national flag carrier failed to meet its obligations despite lapse of the deadline.
Additional Collector AFU Tahir Qureshi on the recommendations of Collector Preventive Tariq Huda blocked the NTN of M/s PIA and now, M/s PIA cannot get its imports processed and released.
Model Customs Collectorate of Preventive had served ‘final notice’ on M/s Pakistan International Airline (PIA) for clearance of dues pertaining to wet leased six aircraft, as the post-dated cheques submitted by the Airline were dishonored.
These six aircraft were imported by PIA and October-November 2014 against wet lease agreements. The same were released against undertaking furnished by M/s PIA without payment of duty and taxes subject to the condition that leviable duty and taxes will be paid within three months.
M/s PIA furnished four post-dated cheques amounting to Rs617.167 million out of which an amount of Rs311.261 million has been encashed whereas two cheques amounting to Rs305.906 in total were dishonored and returned back by the concerned bank.
Customs authorities had advised the national flag carrier to forward pay order of Rs554.333 million, which is recoverable from M/s PIA on account of taxes on the declared wet lease value.
MCC Preventive had warned M/s PIA that failing in making the payment by August 11, 2015 would attract action under the relevant provisions of law.
Since the payment was received, PIA’s NTN has been blocked in the first phase and further action such as lodging of FIR for dishonored cheques and attachment of bank accounts may also be taken.
PIA and many other institutions such as Railways, Pakistan Steel etc., in a planned manner, have been destroyed. Some politicians and bureaucrats working on allegedly foreign agenda made gains for themselves on cost of national institutions.
Over decades, the goodwill of these reputable institutions was tarnished and local media played a major role in propagating the exaggerated negative aspects instead of promoting positives.
However, the military leadership as well as PML-N government are committed to fish out the country of these testing times, which is evident from the government’s internal and foreign policies.
Law & order situation of the country has been a cause of concerns for the last many years; but now the military leadership along with elected government have made remarkable progress in this direction and terrorism as well as crime have been limited to major extent.