9.1 PSW Act 2021, Profiles & Cross-Agency Data

Why the Single Window is now the AD’s front door

A Karachi importer who still walks into a trade branch “to get an EIF printed before we file the GD” is describing a retired workflow. The Pakistan Single Window elimination-of-EIF/EFE page states the old rule in one sentence: traders used to visit banks to obtain consignment-wise Electronic Import Form (EIF) and Electronic Form-E (EFE) before filing a Goods Declaration (GD) with Pakistan Customs. PSW’s published design is to drop that consignment-wise bank form as a precondition of Customs clearance and to replace it with electronic trader profiles exchanged in real time through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) between PSW and commercial banks / Authorized Dealers (ADs).

That design is not a website convenience. It is statute. The Pakistan Single Window Act, 2021 is Act No. III of 2021. The Gazette of Pakistan Extraordinary of 14 April 2021 records presidential assent on 9 April 2021. The long title is “An Act to make provisions for the establishment of Pakistan single window.” Section 1 names the Act, extends it to the whole of Pakistan, and leaves commencement to a Federal Government Gazette notification. The preamble recites Pakistan’s ratification of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade Facilitation, which calls for a national single window. PSW’s own About page records that Pakistan ratified the TFA on 27 October 2015 and notified a trade-related National Single Window as a Category C commitment with effect from 22 February 2017. The Prime Minister’s Office designated Pakistan Customs in the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) as Lead Agency in October 2017.

Section 2 of the Act defines Pakistan single window as an information and communication technology facility that allows persons or entities involved in trade and transport to lodge standardised information and documents with a single-entry point to fulfil import, export, and transit-related regulatory requirements without being required to submit the same data element more than once. That is the legal meaning of “integrated declaration.” The trader does not file one story to Customs, a second story to a plant-protection desk, and a third story to the bank. One lodgement feeds the agencies that the Act brings onto the system.

Lead Agency, Operating Entity, Governing Council

Section 5 is the first exam hinge. Unless the Federal Government determines otherwise, Pakistan Customs shall be the Lead Agency. The Lead Agency must establish an Operating Entity for development, acquisition, roll-out, operations, maintenance, upgrading, enhancements, and marketing of PSW. Section 6 then requires that Operating Entity to be constituted under the Companies Act, 2017. The Governing Council, on the Lead Agency’s recommendation, may replace the Operating Entity if it fails performance benchmarks in the memorandum of understanding, as reported in performance audits, consistently for three consecutive years. The Federal Government may likewise change the Lead Agency on the same three-year non-performance test.

PSW’s official About page states the live facts a desk officer can cite. The Pakistan Single Window Company is a public-sector company incorporated under section 42 of the Companies Act, 2017, registered on 15 April 2020, Corporate Universal Identification Number 0150222, NTN 8157459, SECP section 42 licence 1362 dated 13 April 2020. The Federal Government has notified that company as the Operating Entity of the PSW system under the Act. PSW’s legal library lists the Gazette instruments: notification of Pakistan Customs as Lead Agency, and designation of PSW as Operating Entity. Do not call the Operating Entity “FBR IT” or “WeBOC 2.” WeBOC remains a Customs processing channel; PSW is the statutory single window run by the notified company.

Section 4 creates the Governing Council. The Federal Minister-in-charge of the Division to which the Act’s business is allocated is the Chairperson. The head of the Lead Agency is the ex-officio secretary to the Council, convenes meetings with the Chairperson’s prior approval, heads the secretariat, and communicates proceedings to OGAs, Pakistan Customs, and other concerned entities. Decisions are by simple majority of members present and voting, with a casting vote for the person presiding. Trade-body invitees may sit in deliberations without a vote. PSW’s legal page also records that PSW work is allocated to the Revenue Division.

Section 3 then binds the machine together. The Federal Government establishes the facility by Gazette. Pakistan Customs and OGAs shall participate in and form an integral part of PSW and shall bring their laws, regulations, procedures, processes, and information requirements related to import, export, transit trade, and associated transport into the Single Window. The Governing Council may waive, in whole or in part, temporarily or otherwise, the participation requirement for any OGA. That waiver is a Council act, not a branch manager’s courtesy.

OpenExamPrep’s independent reading for a trade officer is operational, not ceremonial. If a Faisalabad spinning mill’s cotton import needs a phytosanitary permit, a Customs GD, and an AD remittance, PSW is the lodging point. The bank’s job is the FX profile, the Financial Instrument, and the later debit or credit advice — not a parallel paper file that contradicts the declaration Customs already accepted.

Electronic trader profiles: the AD’s KYC file goes onto EDI

SBP Foreign Exchange Manual Chapter 13, paragraph 6B and Chapter 12, paragraph 15B restated the same architecture after FE Circular No. 05 of 2 July 2021. In terms of the PSW Act, an Operating Entity has been set up to manage PSW as part of Pakistan’s WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement work. PSW is an automated platform on which importers and exporters electronically submit an integrated declaration. ADs shall be integrated with PSW to provide customer-profile details, financial instruments, and foreign-exchange remittance and settlement data for their customers.

The PSW elimination page and the November 2022 User Manual for Traders and Customs Agents — Elimination of EIF & EFE spell the bank-side pre-conditions. The trader must be an active subscriber of the PSW portal. The trader must hold a valid bank account with the relevant bank. That bank must be integrated with PSW. On the portal, under Registration, the trader uses Associate New Profile in the Banks section, selects the bank, enters a valid IBAN, and enters the email and mobile number registered with that bank. Those contact details must match bank records for the IBAN. PSW’s own FAQ is blunt: you cannot invent a personal Gmail and a cousin’s mobile number to force the profile through. If the bank is not integrated, the system errors; the published support channel is 021-111-111-779 / support@psw.gov.pk.

The AD’s duty is not a click-through. Chapter 13 para 6B(iv) and (vi) and Chapter 12 para 15B(vi) require the AD to continue KYC / customer due diligence and to maintain a risk profile. At registration, PSW sends an electronic validation request through EDI. The AD must validate IBAN, contact details, NTN, modes of payment allowed, and other agreed information. All amendments, updates, deactivations, or additional restrictions must go to PSW in real time through EDI. PSW’s banking-profile screen, as published on the elimination page, has two sections: General Information (bank name, IBAN, mobile, email, status) and Authorized Payment Modes (import modes and export modes separately).

Multiple bank accounts may be associated against the same User ID. That is a published PSW rule, not a loophole. A Sialkot surgical exporter may keep a working-capital account at Bank A and a retention account at Bank B. Each profile still needs that bank’s KYC match. The AD that “orally confirms” a profile without validating IBAN and registered contacts has not performed the Manual’s validation step.

For all foreign-exchange purposes, functions performed and information shared through EDI with PSW are construed to have been performed by the Authorized Dealer itself (Chapter 12 para 15B(v)(b); Chapter 13 para 6B(v)). Data security, confidentiality, and business continuity of the bank’s own systems remain the AD’s responsibility. A Head Office that treats a failed EDI message as “PSW’s problem, we never issued anything” will lose that argument the day FEOD reprints the message log.

F.E.1/2021-SB (19 July 2021): the importer’s statutory declaration

Notification No. F.E.1/2021-SB dated 19 July 2021 sits in Appendix III of the Manual. It is issued in exercise of section 20(3) of FERA 1947 and in supersession of Notification No. F.E.1/2016-SB dated 26 July 2016. The operative text is two numbered points:

1. All imports into Pakistan shall only be made against the permissible modes of imports as allowed by SBP from time to time.
2. All importers of goods in Pakistan shall submit a declaration, while undertaking an import transaction, in the prescribed manner and to the prescribed authority, stating that the payment against the goods imported / to be imported has been or will be made through an Authorized Dealer in Pakistan, where required, as per SBP instructions issued from time to time.

Chapter 13 para 6B(ii) then places that declaration inside the PSW integrated declaration. For banks not yet integrated with PSW, EIF continues to be issued on request under the WeBOC instructions still printed in paragraph 6A. Do not tell a candidate that EIF “no longer exists anywhere.” PSW is the primary integrated channel; residual WeBOC / non-integrated-bank EIF is the Manual’s published exception.

On the export side, Chapter 12 para 15B(ii) requires exporters to file, as part of the PSW declaration, a declaration to Pakistan Customs that payment against exported goods has been or will be received through an Authorized Dealer as prescribed by SBP (Appendix V-10A, as currently footnoted, including EPD Circular Letter No. 03 of 13 June 2025). Realization itself is still Notification No. F.E.1/2022-SB (5 January 2022) and Chapter 12: full export value through an AD, in USD or another convertible currency in which the AD maintains accounts, or in rupees from a non-resident repatriable bank account. Managers, proprietors, partners, and directors of the declaring firm are held severally and jointly responsible for repatriation (exports) and for the import of goods (imports).

A valid trader profile maintained with an AD is mandatory for filing the PSW declaration (Chapter 12 para 15B(iii); Chapter 13 para 6B(iii)). Subscription to PSW without a validated bank profile does not let the mill clear cargo.

Negative-list hits and the one-working-day clock

Chapters 12 and 13 require the AD to share with PSW the list of countries, commodities, and suppliers on the bank’s negative list under its risk-management policy. If a declaration matches a negative list maintained at PSW, an exception request goes to the AD by EDI. The trader may still file the declaration, but goods are cleared only after the AD approves the transaction. The AD must respond to PSW within one working day of receiving the information, subject to receiving any further information needed from the customer. A Lahore AD that lets a high-risk supplier GD sit unanswered over a long weekend is not “waiting for Head Office legal.” The Manual’s clock is one working day.

Cross-agency data: only names the Schedule actually prints

Section 2(n) defines other government agencies (OGAs) as the regulatory authorities, including their subordinate entities, listed in the Schedule, whether referred to jointly or severally. Section 19 empowers amendment of that Schedule. Do not invent a ministry because a training slide looked busy. Teach the Schedule as published in the Gazette Act, and teach later Gazette inclusions and module roll-outs only as PSW’s legal library actually lists them.

The original Schedule (see sections 2(n) and 19) names seventy-four organisations. The trade-desk subset a Foreign Trade Certificate candidate must be able to recognise, because they appear by those names on that Schedule, includes:

• The Federal Board of Revenue (Schedule no. 71) and Pakistan Customs as Lead Agency — Customs/FBR is the clearance spine.
• State Bank of Pakistan (Schedule no. 64) — FX profiles, Financial Instruments, BDA/BCA, and ITRS sit here, not in a “Customs payment module” invented by the branch.
• Department of Plant Protection (Schedule no. 10) — DPP is the phytosanitary and import-permit authority; PSW publishes a DPP user manual, and DPP was formally brought onto the system under S.R.O. 1291(I)/2021 with effect from 1 July 2021.
• Animal Quarantine Department (Schedule no. 2).
• Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Schedule no. 12).
• Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (Schedule no. 51); PSW’s legal page also hosts a PSQCA circular annex.
• Commerce Division (Schedule no. 7), Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (Schedule no. 73), The Board of Investment (Schedule no. 69), Strategic Exports Division (SECDIV), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Schedule no. 65).
• Narcotics Control Division (Schedule no. 34). PSW’s legal library separately publishes roll-out of a PSW module for the Ministry of Narcotics Control.
• Port bodies named on the Schedule: Karachi Port Trust (no. 21), Gwadar Port Authority (no. 19), Port Qasim Authority (no. 56), plus Licensed Ports, Dry Ports, Terminal Operators, etc. (no. 22).
• Other named regulators a goods file can hit: Chief Inspector of Boilers (no. 5), Department of Explosives (no. 9), Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department (no. 16), Marine Fisheries Department (no. 23), Engineering Development Board (no. 14), Export Processing Zones Authority (no. 15).

PSW’s legal page also publishes Inclusion of OGAs in the Schedule to the PSW Act, 2021 and a roll-out notice for the Sindh Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control (ET&NC) Department. Treat those as later Gazette/module events, not as a licence to add unlisted nicknames. The CEO message on the About page states that, once completed, PSW will connect 77 government departments, Customs, commercial banks, and other public and private entities. Seventy-seven is the published target universe, not a fourth bank you invent at the counter.

Commercial banks and ADs are not OGAs on the Schedule; they are EDI counterparties. Freight forwarders, clearing agents, and transporters appear in PSW’s operational description as economic operators who benefit from digitised LPCOs (licences, permits, certificates, and other documents). Subscription is the first step that authorises users to obtain Customs clearance and OGA LPCOs and to make electronic payments.

Pakistani AD scenarios that turn on the architecture

• A Multan importer’s PSW profile uses the finance director’s personal mobile, which is not the number on the bank’s core record for that IBAN. PSW rejects the association. The correct fix is to update the bank-registered contact or use the registered contact, not to “force-approve” the profile in a branch email.
• A Karachi AD’s negative list includes a named chemical supplier. The importer files the GD anyway. Goods wait for the AD’s EDI approval. The trade officer who is in a credit committee at 4 p.m. still owes PSW a response within one working day.
• A bank that is not yet integrated keeps issuing EIF under Chapter 13 para 6A / 6B(ii). A colleague who tells that importer “EIF is illegal after 2021” is misreading the Manual’s residual channel.
• An EDI message wrongly marks the exporter’s authorised export modes as open-account only. Because EDI is the AD’s own act, the restriction is the bank’s restriction until the AD sends a real-time amendment.

Keep the vocabulary exact. Operating Entity is the statutory company. Lead Agency is Pakistan Customs. OGA is a Schedule body. Integrated declaration is the single lodgement. Trader profile is the KYC banking profile the AD validates. F.E.1/2021-SB is the importer’s section 20(3) declaration that payment has been or will be made through an AD. Those five labels are the 9.1 exam kit.