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More Afghan border check posts likely

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is considering the setting up of more check posts along border with Afghanistan to curb smuggling, Abdullah Yousaf, the chairman of the Central Board of Revenue, said on Monday.

Mr Yousaf, who was talking to journalists after inaugurating a CBI training workshop for 22 Afghan customs officials, said there are 17 check posts along the Afghanistan border, but the number is insufficient.

The workshop is as part of an effort to assist Afghanistan develop an efficient customs system.

Mr Yousaf said Pakistan and Afghanistan were losing millions of dollars in foreign exchange to smuggling.

The government will not allow the import of right-hand-drive vehicles to Afghanistan under the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA), he said, since that country uses left-hand-drive vehicles on its roads.

The import of right-hand-drive vehicles will lead to their being smuggled into Pakistan, which is why the government has decided to keep them on the negative list, he explained. He said Pakistan and Afghanistan are negotiating the negative list under the ATTA, and that the list might be reduced to four items from the existing six.

Mr Yousaf said the two countries would remove trade barriers in bilateral trade.

He said in the last fiscal year the two countries traded goods worth $800 million, and that the amount was likely to rise to about $1 dollars in the current fiscal.

At the inaugural ceremony of the workshop, the CBR chairman had said Pakistan would share its knowledge of taxation and economic development with Afghanistan, and provide the necessary support to it in this field.

He asked tax officials to arrange a visit of Afghanistan’s tax staff to Karachi to show them how CBR officials were handling the export and import of goods under the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA).

Mr Yousaf said Afghan tax officials would gain from the visit first-hand knowledge of the difficulties of the Pakistani staff handling the Afghan transit trade at Karachi ports.

Turning to another subject in his remarks at the inaugural ceremony, the CBR chairman said the tax revenue target for the current financial year would be achieved.

In the last fiscal the CBR raised Rs 518 billion, against the target of Rs 510 billion, he added.

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