Pakistan: Drop in diesel sales points towards smuggling from Iran
Pakistan has seen a 43% drop in diesel sales, according to recent data released by Arif Habib Limited.
Abdul Rehman, a financial expert, said the decline in diesel sales clearly points towards smuggling from Iran.
He said many in the trucking industry have shifted to Iranian diesel, easily available in outskirts of Karachi.
He said, “Whenever government tries to collect taxes on diesel, price delta promotes smuggling.”
An anonymous data expert recently wrote a very convincing Twitter thread on the issue.
He said: “Diesel smuggling continues to undermine legitimate business activities, evade taxes, and fuel organized crime in Balochistan among law enforcement agencies and the lack of effective border control measures.
The main source of smugglers is using the sea route of Jiwani via Dasht River using the speed boats (all the way from Sistan,Iran) to transport the diesel in cans and daily millions of worth Diesel,petrol, weapon and drugs smuggled Pakistan with nearly thousands of boats.
All of these speedboats came from Shahrak Maskunin and other nearby areas of Sistan Provence which is estimated 15 to 18 KMs of travel to reach the dasht river crossing Pakistani border to Jiwani.
After reaching the Jiwani there is about 4.7km(according to Google) long coast used to dump off the diesel/petrol and smuggled goods the palace having proper arrangements of cemented tanks, storages and hotels where thousands of people concerned to smuggling daily.
Whole long coast having the gutted Tanks to dump fuel from cans and later it filled to Toyota pickups and cargo trucks here and these trucks having tanks inside along with snuggled goods where they move to near Gawadar to change transport means.
There it being filled in other cans on the Non Custom paid (Iranian) Toyota pickups to move the goods and fuel to highway and storages thousands of vehicles daily transport these smuggled goods to whole Balochistan,South Punjab and bordering areas of Sindh.
Since this the only way for the people to earn money government and law enforcement agencies failed to stop this mafia also due to the huge corruption, big hands of Sardars and top government elites.”
Check out his thread below: