Smuggling crisis

Smuggling of goods in and out of Pakistan has a very detrimental effect. For one, the government loses tax and duties revenue. Second, it destroys other legal and local businesses in Pakistan. This is because legal businesses that have paid taxes have higher costs compared to the smuggled products that have paid zero tax. Therefore, no industries can be established in the presence of a thriving smuggling sector. To overcome this problem, previous governments have fenced the entire border between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. Unfortunately, we have still not seen any reduction in smuggling. In fact it has been recently reported that a huge quantity of currency and wheat has been smuggled out of Pakistan.

This is very alarming. We need to fortify the border because without that the government will not be able to help local industries flourish.

Shahryar Khan Baseer

Peshawar