The government has collected at least 200 million Afghanis (over $2.59 million) in taxes from the registration of more than 3,500 vehicles over the last month, the Customs General Directorate said.
The process began a month ago after the government decided to ban unregistered vehicles from driving in the city and required them to become documented. The process started on October 22 and will continue until the end of this month.
The customs director Mohammad Khalil Salehzada said the number of employees in his office has been increased to expedite the process and meet the two-month deadline for registering the vehicles.
“The capacity of the Kabul customs was 50 vehicles a day and now it has increased to 700 vehicles a day and we are making efforts to increase it to 1,000 and more than that,” Salehzada said.
He said that at least 15,000 vehicles have applied for registration and they have issued documents to 3,500 of them.
“The department that you see is the data entry section where documents are registered,” said Murtaza Kakar, head of the registration department of the customs directorate.
“The measurement is done based on the ASYCUDA which is an international system. When we enter the data to this system, it provides data on its price and taxes,” said Mohammad Naeem Farid, head of the Automated System for Customs Data (ASYCUDA) department of the customs directorate.
Some owners of unregistered vehicles said police seized their vehicles because they could not get a permission letter for a technical checkup of their vehicles at the customs office.
“They should keep our vehicles because when we return after technical checkup, we are stopped by police,” said Sajjad, a Kabul resident.
The Interior Affairs Ministry said that efforts are underway to prevent the driving of unregistered vehicles in the city.
“The move is aimed at preventing the roaming of unregistered vehicles in the city and for the reduction of crimes,” said Tariq Arian, spokesman for the Interior Affairs Ministry.
The customs director said they expect to collect at least 2 billion Afghanis from the taxes of unregistered vehicles.