Concern expressed over customs clearance system

The World Bank expresses serious concern over the functioning of the Pakistan Customs Computerised System.

ISLAMABAD: The World Bank (WB) has expressed serious concern over the functioning of the Pakistan Customs Computerised System (PaCCS) and commented that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has no contingency plan in place to deal with the termination of PaCCS.

The WB warned the tax authorities that customs cargo clearance is in all likelihood approaching a system failure.

The WB review mission has conducted a detailed study of the PaCCS and submitted a report to the FBR on the working of customs clearance systems in Pakistan.

According to the report, customs cargo clearance is, in all likelihood, approaching a systems failure that could lead to extended outages. With 64 per cent of the country’s cargo being processed by a system that cannot have any bugs fixed or upgrades applied to it because of a disputed contract, PaCCS will become increasingly unstable. The remaining 36 per cent of the cargo is handled by the “One Customs” system that, within a year, will be running on a hardware platform that is no longer under active vendor support.

Within 12 to 24 months, both of these systems will have significant outages that will affect customs’ ability to clear cargo for an extended period.

Three different customs systems are in use for goods declaration processing. The use of three different systems by traders and agents complicates their business as they need to know which system is to be used for which declaration. It also dilutes customs’ ability to concentrate on its IT development efforts and affects the ability of customs officials to deliver quality service.

There is no FBR contingency plan in place to deal with the termination of this system in an orderly way beyond forcing all transactions to be handled by the other currently available system entitled ‘One Customs’.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2010.