December 21, 2018 (MLN): Chairing the first meeting of its Steering Committee yesterday, the Minister for Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs Mr. Asad Umar approved key decisions for enabling the FBR’s Customs Wing to ensure timely implementation of the ‘National Single Window’ system in Pakistan. The system would emerge as the overarching umbrella for automating public sector entities dealing with cross border trade providing an integrated single interface with private sector to carry out imports, exports and transit trade.

This will substantially improve Pakistan’s ranking in ‘Ease of doing businesses’ besides enabling Pakistan to comply with its commitment under the Trade Facilitation Agreement of the WTO. The National Single Window to be known as ‘WinPak’ (Window Pakistan) will help to develop the country’s initiative for its electronic logistics platform, which the Finance Minister said should be done within the next three years.

‘WinPak’ will link all key cross border trade related regulatory authorities including Customs WeBOC on a single ICT based platform. The connected government approach will improve transparency and predictability in imports and exports while cutting down costs/time, both for public and private sectors.

The much needed port community system will also be established to improve efficiency of sea and airports in Pakistan under this project. Not only Government to Government (G2G) and Business to Government transactions will take place on this new platform but it will also facilitate all Business to Business (B2B) transactions.

While lauding efforts of the FBR in leading this important program, the Minister, stressed that the customs project team should not merely rely on technology deployment but also adopt holistic approach in simplifying the complex regulatory regime and allied laws to meaningfully improve trading across border regime in Pakistan. The meeting was also attended by Federal Secretaries from all key ministries and FBR officers.

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