The world may be shrinking, but businesses are expanding and entrepreneurs are on an offence to find innovative ways of working in an ever- globalised world. The goal remains the same: saving time and money. TIR is one route to reach such goals, literally.

Since 1975, The Customs Convention on the International Transport of Goods under Cover of TIR Carnets is one of the most successful international transport conventions and is so far the only universal customs transit system in existence. To date, it has 78 Contracting Parties, including the European Union. It covers the whole of Europe and reaches out to North Africa and the Near and Middle East. More than 33,000 opera- tors (including TCS) are authorised to use the TIR system and around 1.5 million TIR transports are carried out per year.

The UN TIR Convention (Transports Internationaux Routiers) is overseen by the International Road Transport Union (IRU). It provides the maximum facility currently possible, to move goods in sealed vehicles or containers from one customs territory to the destination customs territory, without requiring extensive and time-consuming border checks at intermediate borders, while providing the required security and guarantees to the customs authorities throughout the route.

Before becoming a TIR-authorised operator, TCS Overland Freight has moved goods from Karachi to Central Asian destinations through traditional non-TIR systems. Using a traditional method—still employed by all non-TIR operators—as soon as the Pakistani border is crossed, all goods are off-loaded from the Pakistani vehicles and then re-loaded on to Afghani vehicles, subject to clearance of transit customs houses. The whole procedure is then repeated at the Afghan-Uzbek borders when the Afghani vehicles enter Uzbekistan, and at all transit points there on, until the goods reach their destination.

Transporting goods under TIR Convention allows the international carriage of goods in one vehicle from one or more customs offices of departure to one or more customs offices of destination (up to a total of four customs offices departure and destination) and through as many countries as necessary. As a rule, the vehicle remains sealed throughout the TIR transport route, and thus, the goods are generally not inspected at border crossings. However, customs authorities remain entitled to per- form inspections randomly whenever they suspect irregularities.

According to the UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Eu- rope), the overall supervision of the TIR Convention and its application in all Contracting Parties falls under the responsibility of the TIR Administrative Committee, which is an inter-governmental body comprising all Contracting Parties and its TIR Executive Board (TIRExB), composed of nine elected members, each from a different Contracting Party.

For more than sixty years, the TIR Convention has significantly con- tributed to the facilitation of international transport and trade throughout

the UNECE region. With Pakistan being at a geographically strategic lo- cation, TCS’s authorisation as a TIR operator does not only benefit the country itself but also helps the Central Asian countries to benefit from the tremendous potential of Pakistan’s services, manufacturing and commodities sectors while capitalising on the country’s manpower capabilities.