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KABUL (PAN): Up to 40 percent of custom revenues are lost due to smuggling on the border, the finance minister said on Monday, while border police say the amount is not that high.
Many goods, including food and construction material are smuggled from Pakistan and Iran by horse or other method, circumventing the tax they would need to pay, said the finance minister, Aziz Shams. He said the government loses 40 percent of its customs revenues this way each year.
According Shams, Afghanistan had collected 35 billion afghanis ($780 million) in revenue and he hoped that would rise to 38 billion afghanis by the end of the year.
The Afghanistan financial years begins on March 21.
It was impossible to stop the smuggling in the short term, as Afghanistan has long frontiers with Pakistan and Iran, he said. Strong and better equipped border forces were needed, he said.
Major Gen. Sayed Aman Sadat, deputy commander of border police said he did not think the government was losing as much as 40 percent of revenue to smuggling.
However, he called for more border police, saying their posts should be in sight of each other. The smugglers are able to take advantage of the night and the lack of police, he said.
Currently, there are 20,000 border police and 42,000 are needed to fully patrol the borders, Sadat said, adding that efforts were being made to reach that number.
40 per cent of custom revenues lost due to smuggling | Pajhwok Afghan News