Clearance: Customs asked to auction cargo stuck at ports

Thousands of containers carrying imported goods are at ports for years.

KARACHI: In a country like Pakistan where the storage space is considered very precious, thousands of containers have been stuck at the Karachi Port and the Port Bin Qasim for years, blocking the movement of cargo traffic.

In a statement, Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) President Iftikhar Ahmed Vohra urged the Pakistan Customs to ensure a speedy auction of the cargo in such containers in order to save the ports from further congestion.

The demand came after representatives of the Pakistan International Container Terminal (PICT), Karachi International Container Terminal (KICT) and Qasim International Container Terminal (QICT) sought the KCCI’s assistance in convincing the customs authorities to swiftly auction the cargo stuck at the ports. They told the KCCI office-bearers that thousands of containers carrying imported goods worth millions of dollars were lying unattended at the ports of Karachi and Bin Qasim because of the failure of importers to get them cleared by paying duties and taxes.



The customs and port authorities should be equally blamed as they had not been able to ensure timely auction of the cargo, they said.

The KCCI president suggested that the problem of containers getting stuck at the ports required concrete measures on a sustainable basis to address the issue of prolonged delay.

He proposed that a dedicated auction yard should be allocated for a regular disposal of the cargo after every 15 days in order to avoid port congestion. Apart from this, a committee should be constituted comprising representatives of the Karachi Chamber, terminal operators and customs officials to monitor the overall progress.

While promising his support to the terminal operators in resolving the issue, Vohra asked Federal Board of Revenue Chairman Tariq Bajwa and the chief collector (south) of Pakistan Customs to accelerate the auction process as the traffic disruption was also causing losses to the national exchequer.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th,  2015.

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