There are major discrepancies between the weight of petroleum imported into the country and what is reported to be the tonnage of oil tankers, making it difficult to track how much fuel Afghanistan imports, the Afghan National Standards Authority said on Monday.
"The problems are related to the place from where oil is imported, they show it as less on the documents," said Mojiburrahman Khatir, technical deputy director of ANSA. "The oil and gas directorate is responsible for checking the tonnage when it reaches customs and then its referred to ANSA for quality checking. We have responsibility to check the quantity, we have some reports that quantity of imported oils are different."
But the Oil and Gas Directorate said that ANSA relies only on the documents and doesn't actually check the tonnage of the oil tankers.
"The oil and gas traders send their imported petroleum to customs directorate where it is weighed, later on it is dispatched to us and we permit them to cross the port after certification of the weights," said Faridullah Sherzai, the Chairman of Oil and Gas Directorate.
The information gathered by the ANSA shows that huge quantity of oil and gas are being imported in the country on an annual basis and the concerned organ only relies on documents and doesn't weigh the tankers. This paves the way for embezzlement in customs houses.
The officials of the Custom Houses refuted allegations made by the independent standard department.
"The Afghan National Standards Authority's assertions belong to themselves, I only talk on behalf of the customs," said Najibullah Wardak, general director of customs. "We have the facilities to certify the weight of oil and gas, it is checked and weighed in customs. In areas where we have no facilities, we use the facilities of the oil and gas directorate. After completion of the process fuel materials are entered into customs houses, the countries have no need to show lesser weights, because they reflect their export balance on the basis of that."
ANSA officials said that the difference in weights makes it difficult to have an accurate statistics on the amount of fuel materials imported in the country.