Move to stop citizens from taking over $3,000 abroad

 


KARACHI: While millions of dollars are taken away by the big guns, there is a serious move to stop ordinary citizens from taking more than $3,000 per person while proceeding abroad and not more than $25,000 in a year.


There is also a proposal not to allow any foreign currency amount for children under 15 years of age. The Pakistan Customs has suggested to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to amend the regulations on taking out foreign currency abroad by a person and has advised to reduce it to $3,000 or cap an amount of $25,000 per annum to a person.

Collector Preventive Tariq Huda on Monday, while talking to The News, said that presently the allowed limit of foreign currency was misused by passengers going abroad.

Huda said that under the prevailing SBP rules, an individual can take huge amount of foreign currency through multiple visits abroad. The provision was also misused as all family members including children are allowed to carry foreign currency as there is no restriction, he added.

Through a notification issued in July 1998 by the SBP allowed that any person can take out of Pakistan $10,000/- or equivalent thereof in other foreign currencies.Since the $10,000 limit is allowed, so Pakistan Customs has no such data of passengers. Thus, there is no record of foreign exchange amount transferred through this channel. However, Customs sources said that billions of dollars are transferred through the SBP regulation.

Tariq Huda said that the Customs authorities through the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) proposed the central bank to reduce the limit of money transfer by an individual to $3,000 and cap the limit of $25,000 per year by a person.

He said that currency transfer by the authorised dealers was monitored by the Preventive Collectorate to ensure the amount was not beyond limits.The collector said that Pakistan Customs had evolved a mechanism to detect illegal money transfer to gather information about the persons involved in this. Under this mechanism, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) successfully intercepted the illegal foreign exchange transfer and made some arrests, he added.He said that about Rs10 million worth foreign currency was seized during the ongoing anti-smuggling drive by the Preventive Collectorate.