KARACHI: Sharjeel Jamal, Convener of the FPCCI Committee on Trade and Regulatory Laws, has expressed concerns over the modules prepared and being implemented by the Pakistan Single Window (PSW), a system that aims to facilitate trade and customs clearance.
Jamal said that the PSW modules were made by the developer without the input of stakeholders and no user acceptance committee was ever constituted to vet them. He said that the entire exercise was against the legal due process and violated the rights of traders.
He also said that he had sent several queries to PSW regarding the minutes of the PSW meetings, the legal statute regarding PSW subscription and renewal fees, and the list of essential and non-essential items circulated by the commercial banks. However, he said that PSW could not provide any satisfactory answers.
He further said that PSW had fixed a subscription fee of Rs500, which was being collected from traders. He said that this was an additional and unnecessary levy as PSW was already charging their fee per Goods Declaration.
He demanded that the collection of PSW subscription fee from traders should be stopped immediately. He also criticized that PSW had not provided the minutes of the PSW meetings, which suggested that they were not being prepared.
He also accused PSW of giving unnecessary negative list authorization to commercial banks, without any legal statute. He said that this made banks as trade regulators, which was not their role.
He said that taxpayers’ money should not be used to make illegal PSW modules and impose them on traders. He urged the Prime Minister to launch a comprehensive system audit of PSW system, take stakeholders into confidence and prepare modules that would actually facilitate trade instead of burdening traders with additional fees, bottlenecks and hectic procedures.