The Faceless Customs Assessment (FCA) system cleared restricted and banned goods worth Rs. 10.538 billion in violation of the Import Policy Order, according to an audit by the Directorate General of Post Clearance Audit (PCA).
The audit, covering December 16, 2024, to March 15, 2025, found that over 1,006 Goods Declarations (GDs) involving restricted items were wrongly cleared, exposing major flaws in the automated customs system launched to curb corruption.
The audit also identified Rs. 5.007 billion in duty and tax evasion across 1,524 GDs, and an additional Rs. 2.433 billion in lost fines due to failure to frame contravention cases. Total losses from these cases stood at Rs. 7.44 billion.
Overall, the report estimated revenue losses of Rs. 38 billion in just three months. Only 8.8 percent of clearances were audited, suggesting far higher losses system-wide.
The report further noted Rs. 30.364 billion in lost fines due to non-enforcement under SRO 499(I)/2009, and highlighted Rs. 643 million in suspicious solar panel imports involving unauthorized NTNs and user IDs.
Launched in December 2024, the FCA system was intended to automate and streamline customs processes. The audit suggests it instead enabled large-scale evasion and policy violations.
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In every govt department the scale of corrupt people are dangerously alarming. There should be capital punishment and courts for corruption cases should be dedicated and swift with logical decisions. It might sounds like a dream but this would be need of this time.
Corruotion as you may call it should involve exchange of bribe, whereas, in FCA the bridge of such exchange has been entirely closed, while officers bs16 are kept in jail like inhumane conditions just to curb this corruption narrative. This loss of 38 billion you read above is not due to corruption but due to abolishing of custom groups system. Which the British established 300 years ago with trial and errors of 100 years. In these groups specification goods like group iv which deals with clothing and other textile products the assessing officer from years of working in this group knows every gimmick and tricks of delinquent importers..however when you post the same officer into groupless environment, he/she is no longer able to find flaws as there are more than 99 chatpers of commodities being importer, nth number of SRO and regulations. Same officer clears cars, machines, grains, chemicals. It not humanly possible to know everything. Therefore, unknowingly such losses happen. Without any element of corruption. But the precious revenue what they are working for, is lost in more quantum than the proported corruption. Just my two bucks. FCA is good, but there should be implementations of groups. Without that it’s a rudderless ship.
Instead of improving the new digital system, they will seek a return to the old methods to continue their corruption.
There must be some anomaly in the automated system, it is a foul play, the corrupted mafia wants to remove the automated system and want their physical involvement, the government should only focus to improve the Automated System and should not bow down in front of the most corrupted class of Pakistan – the Customs.
As expected something has come up by the corrupt Mafia to fail the faceless clearance system. Their intervention has been minimize that will dent their pockets. If their are any flaws in the system that need to improved rather scrap the whole system and once again play in the hands of corrupt Mafia
No doubt assisted by the authorities themselves who showed the importer-crooks just how to game the system.
Interesting , hope all are ensured authentic.