The Director General (DG) Customs Automation & Reforms, Federal Board of Revenue Syed Shakeel Shah launched various modules of Export Facilitation Scheme (EFS) for facilitation of exporters and export of goods and services under fully automated and digitized environment.
Shah was speaking to the participants of a workshop organized by All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA). He was accompanied by Collector Customs Sambarial Nayyar Shafique, Additional Collector Customs Dry Port Lahore Farah Farooq, Deputy Director Input Output Coefficient Organization (IOCO) Kareem Adil and other senior officers of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
The Chairman APTMA North Hamid Zaman welcomed the delegation along with Senior Vice Chairman Kamran Arshad and Secretary General Raza Baqir whereas the workshop was attended by a large number of APTMA member mills across the country.
DG Customs Automation & Reforms said that the objective of a series of workshop was to interact with the industry representatives to know about the issues faced in utilization of EFS and glitches being faced by them in their day to day working in order to improve the system.
“As many as 3-4 of the issues have been resolved and remaining would be worked out before the deadline. Deployment of additional human resource and technical assistance would be well in place by the department as well,” he added.
DG said that FBR was proactive to eliminate any irritants on the way of exports and would go all way to resolve all sorts of issues relating to exports.
He said the module related to reconciliation of stock was at final stage and would be made operational by the first week of April.
“The module related to indirect exports has also been developed and already deployed accordingly. Now indirect exporters would not be required to seek approval from the Collector on consignment to consignment basis. Now such exporters would only feed the details in the system and would not require any formal approval,” he informed.
DG Customs also informed that Pakistan Single Window portal has already been put in place and over 70 departments could be accessed through a single platform from all across the country.
He urged the exporters to make maximum use of EFS and Pakistan Single Window and to suggest any improvements required to be made by them.
DG also appreciated APTMA for coordinating with customs in resolution of exporters problems and hoped such interaction would continue in the future.
Shakeel Shah added that FBR has instructed all Collectorates and field formations to automate all processes and business working even if requisite persons are to be hired from the market.
“The trade associations and practitioners would also be associated in the said exercise. After automation there would be no need of repeated approvals for the same exercise once the objective is achieved in this respect, he expressed the hope. Department’s automation team from Karachi made a detailed presentation on the EFS modules and gathered proposals and queries to improve it further,” he concluded.
Speaking on the occasion, Senior Vice Chairman APTMA highlighted the issues being faced by the industry in smooth application of EFS.
Kamran Arshad urged the visiting FBR team to extend an equal period of 48 months for raw material utilization both for the existing ones as well as newly switched over to the EFS.
He also pointed out that the textile exports have dropped by 11 percent over the first eight months of the current fiscal and it is the right time for the FBR to extend maximum support to the textile sector.
