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THE Consortium of Authentix, Inc., MITAS Corporation and AJCL Private Limited has announced that it has finalized a license agreement with Federal Board of Revenue of Pakistan to implement a track and trace system for tobacco, cement, sugar and fertilizer.
The license agreement covers an initial five-year term as well as a three-year extension option.
The scope of the system is to assist both domestic manufacturers and importers with the capability to apply secure and digitized tax stamps to each product of the above categories distributed in Pakistan.
This system will provide for production monitoring, product movement control and product authentication via secure and non-intrusive technologies installed at manufacturing lines, dedicated hand-held equipment, smartphone applications, and multi-faceted security stamps. At anticipated industry product volumes, the total contract will cover an expected 6.5 billion consumer products per annum.
According to the World Bank, production and importation of products in Pakistan for the four industries involved are subject to widespread illicit trade practices such as smuggling, counterfeiting, and production volume underreporting resulting in up to an estimated 50% of the total volume of all goods sold in country.
This illicit trade and lack of proper production reporting causes a massive loss of tax revenue for the Pakistan state budget. For illustration, a key industry source reports that in the segment of tobacco products alone, the amount of tax evasion adds up to over PKR77 billion (USD481 million) per year, which is over three times the amount currently allocated for annual federal government spending on healthcare.
Authentix Chief Executive Officer, Kevin McKenna, stated “On behalf of Authentix and our Consortium partners, we are pleased that the Federal Board of Revenue has finalized this license agreement with us and we look forward to implementing this advanced monitoring and enforcement system for the curtailment and remediation of illicit trade for the benefit of the Pakistan citizens and to create fair trade practices in the industries noted.”
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