Article: Gul Rehman Directorate of Post Clerance Audit Karachi.

The increased trade volumes have necessitated the use of self assessment system duly supported through automation. For that, the under clearance cargoes are divided into low high and medium risk categories, determined through deployment of elaborate risk management methods. The backbone of such automated clearance systems is a robust post clearance audit to verify the accuracy and authenticity of self declarations.

Pakistan was the founding member of Customs Cooperation Council, which later on gave birth to World Customs Organization (WCO). One of the leading covenants of WCO i.e. the Revised Kyoto Convention (RKC) mandatorily requires its member to include audit based controls in their Customs procedures. Another essential requirement of RKC is evaluation of traders’ commercial systems by Customs administration to ensure traders compliance with Customs requirements.

In order to fulfill the international obligation, the Directorate General of PCA was established in October, 2008, with the primary objective to improve trade facilitation and to minimize potential revenue loss. While ensuring that the national and international trade controls, prohibitions and restrictions are being duly observed, the Directorate General of PCA also contributes in educating the stakeholders to improve their level of compliance with international best practices of WCO as well as of WTO. The Directorate General of PCA also gives invaluable input for the improvement of the systems and controls at the clearance level.

Instead of focusing on mere detections, the vision and mission of Directorate General of PCA is to broaden the audit coverage of the custom clearance, the detections become only consequential. The Directorate General of PCA believes that the percentage of audit coverage provided over a time-period should be the performance yardstick; input for policy and procedural corrections is another.

With that objective in mind, The Directorate General of PCA is committed to contribute positively towards overall improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of Pakistan Customs / Federal Board of Revenue.

Performance Review:

The input for audit by PCA at present is contributed by three streams of information i.e. (a) Examination of data from one-custom/WeBOC server on the basis of professional knowledge and experience at Headquarters as well as Directorate (b) Complaints and (c) Special Assignments from FBR.

Considering the limited resources of man and material to process the information gathered thorough these sources, the obvious spike in the performance of the Directorate of PCA, Karachi, as illustrated through following Table and Chart, is commendable.