Karachi: The Federal Cabinet approves the foundation of a new agency known as the National Targeting Centre (NTC), which aims to expand the support needed by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for its primitive initiation.
At a recent meeting, the Revenue Division praised the federal cabinet for introducing a new idea when traditional methods of enforcing border controls could no longer match the increasing volumes of goods, passengers, and vehicular traffic entering or exiting national boundaries.
Technology-enabled platforms like the National Targeting Centre (NTC), which allow collaborative inter-agency border controls, therefore became essential to facilitate cross-border movements and smarter administration.
As the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) claims, the NTC “employs advanced technologies and intelligence analysis to identify and prioritise potential threats related to the movement of passengers and cargo.
Through understandable risk assignments, border control is formed for agencies to find resources easily, respond effectively to high-risk targets, and foster collaboration among various government agencies.
Through the NTC, many agencies, such as customs, FIA, Immigration, ANF, and other LEAs, would have to share information and profiles for balanced targeting to easily stop crimes like smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, etc.
The cabinet was appreciated even more because globally, NTCs are hosted and managed by customs administrations such as ’lead agencies ’due to their broader anti-smuggling mandate and jurisdiction over the cross-border movement of persons and goods across land, sea and air.
These centres often provide the necessary platforms for multi-agency contribution, enabling the physical co-location of different agencies through their respective liaison officers.
The Revenue Division noticed that customs, as the lead agency, had successfully applied the Pakistan Single Window(PSW), which, through the Integrated Risk Management System, allowed other government agencies to mark their respective risks in international trade. This system could be considered one of the main pillars in the timely establishment of the NTC in Pakistan.
Additionally, during the meeting of the Anti-Smuggling Steering Committee led by the Prime Minister on October 17, 2019, the FBR was given the task of integrating anti-smuggling/trade data with a central database.
It was noted that the FBR intended to establish a dedicated Project Management Unit (PMU) under the customs wing for NTC with technical help from development partners.
Drawing from international best practices, the PMU noted that it would engage with all stakeholders to develop and implement a detailed project designed for establishing NTC, including a legal framework, authority, working set-up, and robust Information and Communications Technology (ICT) platform.
It was told that an inter-ministerial meeting, in this case, had already been held on August 24, 2024, aligning all relevant stakeholders on board with the ideas.