Sources said that Agility, the Kuwait-based logistic company and owner of the software, had switched off the system the night between Monday and Tuesday and had withdrawn support staff from Pakistan customs office Tuesday morning after the government failed to resolve the issue of sale purchase agreement for the automated system.

PaCCS cleared around 5,000 containers daily, around 65 percent of the total consignment clearance. Sources said that the system cleared around Rs4 billion worth of imports and exports a day.

Sources in Agility said that the step had been taken after the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) postponed the meeting scheduled for July 25 over the pricing of source code of the system.

Officials in Pakistan Customs, however, said that the system had been offline due to a technical fault.

PaCCS was introduced as a pilot project at the Karachi International Container Terminal in March 2005 for clearing consignments.

The speedy clearance attracted two other terminals to follow the suit.

The formal launch of the system hit snags as FBR and Agility disagreed on running the system on Public Private Partnership.

Since last year, Agility has been demanding payment for its services. The company several times threatened to shut down the system. FBR itself closed the system in May 2010.

After facing severe criticism from the trade community, the FBR restored the system and assured the Kuwait-based company of a sale purchase agreement.

Businesses have supported Agility and asked FBR to resolve the issue immediately. “If FBR wants to continue, it should purchase it,” said president PaCCS Users Club Rizwan Khadim Rathore.

The trade community is annoyed over the surprise shut down and said that Agility is doing this just to blackmail FBR.

“There should be a timeline for closure,” said Khurram Ijaz, former General Secretary Karachi Customs Agents Association.

He urged FBR to resolve the issue on priority basis because any delay would cause immense losses to both trade and the government.

“The trade suffers about Rs12 million losses in terms of demurrage only in case of one-day closure,” he added.