Customs duty processes to be reviewed: MoF

KABUL (Pajhowk): The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has acknowledged the embezzlement of 50 percent of the country’s revenue, saying customs duty processes would be reviewed for improving transparency.

Mohammad Khalid Painda, acting finance minister, told a press conference in Kabul today that the customs management system had been previously very limited but it would be expanded to provincial departments and the customs structure would be reviewed for more facilities and services.

“MoF needs to take some serious steps for collecting 216 billion afghanis target in revenue in the ongoing 1400 fiscal year, the review of customs structure is a priority,” he said.

The important issue in customs was specifying rates of goods and tariff as unclear rates and tariffs facilitated corruption in customs offices, he said.

Besides expansion of customs services to departments, efforts would be also made for standardization of these services, he added.

One of the problems previously existed was close care reporting for directors of custom offices, but now the reporting would be directly made to the reporting center and general customs office then report directly to the minister, he said.

Painda said he watched closely customs activities during his recent trips to provinces and found the customs affairs were not in good condition.

“For example, if we look at Torkham customs office, it has very limited infrastructural facilities despite billions of dollars invested there in the last 20 years,” he said.

He said that MoF had strategic plans of five and six years but the laws were developed by foreigners which he added were not implementable. The ministry has a short-term one-year plan for collection of revenue transparently and providing required facilities for traders which would be implemented soon, he said.

“Embezzlement of 50 percent of the country’s revenue is completely true, for example, during my trip to Kandahar I found that a truck transporting Pakistani vehicles had actually entered inside the country as a container of auto parts, the driver told me not to open the container, but I emphasized and opened it,” he said.

He added that a single truck carrying vehicles can cause three to four million loss of revenue to the government as such products should be taxed 30 to 40 percent.

Alim Shah Ibrhaimi, deputy director of customs department in MoF, said that the revenue collected in 1400 fiscal year reached 42 billion afghanis, lower than the target of 53.5 billion afghanis during the period.

Abdul HabibZadran, deputy finance minister, said that 56.8 billion afghanis or 12 percent of total national budget had been spent since the beginning of current fiscal year.

Mds/ma

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