Message from Jalil Ahmad Jumriany
Director General
Afghan Customs

I believe the success of any customs organization depends heavily upon the implementation of professionally designed policies and their international compatibility. This becomes all the more clear as one realizes the roles of customs internationally, these spread over ‘customs to customs’, ‘customs to business’ and ‘business to business’. Keeping this in mind the national leadership supported the Afghan Customs Department in its reform and modernization initiative and today I am proud to state that we have come a long way from where we started. Today being the international customs day is an occasion when I feel it my duty to give you an overview of our organization and its endeavors.

Our customs is tasked to man long porous borders with several border ports, inland dry ports and custom houses has a huge customs clearance network, together these custom points or stations number over fifty where legitimate trading activity is conducted. Trans-national transits comprise of varied classifications and are in motion round the clock in all sorts of vehicles or vessels. Back in 2002 we were confronted with a host of problems and unfortunately unlike most economies or customs administrations here they all came at once! Lack of competent officers, overlapping jurisdictions, unclear functions and responsibilities, unique trading and transit styles with weak business processes, lack of technological support, non existent automation manual and discretionary methodologies, poor trade facilitation and low international compatibility resulted in low revenue collection and a fragile customs organization. We did not lose hope!

We needed a turn around and thus the Afghan Customs immediately took stalk of the situation and embarked upon a ‘five year reform and modernization programme’ supported by international assistance. The objectives of our reform programme are to modernize the customs administration and reengineer its business processes, optimize revenues, facilitate trade, promote a tax culture, protect society and thus play our role in national economic prosperity and development. This would allow us our due recognition as a member of the international customs family and would grant us our due share in international trade.