Crackdown on foreign goods’ market

Custom authorities have started a crackdown on markets wherein foreign goods are being sold. The authorities believe that custom duty has not been paid on the foreign made cloth, cosmetics and electronic goods. On the contrary, the owners of shops selling these goods contend that relevant tax has already been paid on the products which custom authorities treat to be smuggled ones. The raids on shops and seizure of foreign goods has created tensed situation.

There is no denying the fact that bulks of the goods imported by Afghanistan through transit trade facility eventually find their way to the markets in Pakistan. The flourishing sale of smuggled, inexpensive, and high quality foreign goods provides employment and business opportunities to large number of people. But at the same it results in the closure of local industry which produce low quality and expensive goods because of sky-high tariff of energy inputs, application of obsolete technology and lack of proper skill of working force.

None of the previous governments bothered about the large scale smuggling of foreign goods into the country and the ones legally imported on dumping price. Likewise, over the past 36 years the elected governments deliberately ignored the formulation of industrial policies to modernize the industrial base of the country. Even after the advent of free trade regime under WTO introduction of modern technologies and their indegenisation with the help of domestic institutions of research and development was completely abandoned. The adhoc measures of preventing the entry of smuggled goods into the domestic markets will not produce the desired results unless products’ inventions, improvement of quality with the application of latest technologies and entrepreneurial innovations are facilitated.

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