The firm.

Shafiq Traders was started in 1987 by two brothers, Rao Muhammad Iqbal Khan and Rao Javaid Iqbal Khan. The licence they were issued that year carried the number 22/87, which means they were the twenty-second customs agent licensed in the country that year. They worked out of a room at the dry port in Mughalpura, in Lahore, and cleared whatever came through it.

Karachi is where the volume is. In 1992 the firm took its Karachi licence and opened an office on I.I. Chundrigar Road, a short walk from the Custom House. The Lahore office never closed. It is still in Sarmad Building outside the dry port and it is still busy.

A great deal about the work has changed since then. Declarations that were once typed out and carried to the Custom House by hand are filed electronically now. We registered on PaCCS in 2005 and have moved with every system that has replaced it since. What has not changed is that somebody from this firm is standing at the terminal when your container is opened.

In thirty-nine years we have filed over thirty thousand Goods Declarations for more than two hundred companies. A few of them are among the largest industrial groups in the country. Most of them are ordinary importers who needed their goods out of the port without any trouble. We are a member of the Karachi Customs Agents Association.