Guides · Faceless assessment
What changed when assessment went faceless, and what it means for your file.
Shafiq Traders · Updated 13 September 2026
Since December 2024, a Goods Declaration filed at Karachi is no longer assessed by an officer sitting at the collectorate you filed it with. It goes to a Central Appraising Unit, and the officer who assesses it has no direct contact with the agent at any point. A query arrives as a message inside the system, not a phone call or a visit, and the file does not move again until it is answered. Faceless assessment changes who looks at the paperwork and how you reach them. It has not made physical examination faceless: a red-channelled consignment is still opened at the terminal, with our staff standing there for it.
What actually changed in December 2024
Before this, a declaration filed at a Karachi collectorate was assessed by an officer attached to that collectorate, and an agent who needed to explain something could go and find him. That link is gone for assessment. A declaration filed at Karachi now goes to a Central Appraising Unit, and the assessing officer works from wherever that unit sits, not from the terminal your goods are sitting at.
The officer never deals with the agent directly. Everything runs through the file on the Pakistan Single Window: the declaration, the documents attached to it, and any query the officer raises against it. There is no counter to stand at for this part of the process.
This applies to assessment specifically: the review of the classification, the value and the documents behind the declaration. It is a separate step from examination, which is what happens if the consignment is also chosen for a physical check.
Before and after faceless assessment
| Before | Since December 2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Who assesses the declaration | An officer at the collectorate where it was filed | A Central Appraising Unit, not tied to where the goods are |
| How a query is raised | Often a call or a visit to the officer's desk | A message against the file on the Pakistan Single Window |
| What answers a query | An explanation, sometimes in person | The document or clarification the message actually asks for |
| What physical examination looks like | The consignment is opened at the terminal if red-channelled | Unchanged: still physical, still at the terminal, when ordered |
Assessment is faceless. Examination is not, at least not yet.
There is no separate scheme called faceless examination. What went faceless is assessment: the paperwork stage, where classification and value are reviewed. If a declaration is also sent for physical examination, that still happens the way it always has, with an officer at the terminal and our staff standing next to him when the container is opened.
What has moved is how much of that examination needs to happen at all. Government statements through 2026 describe scanners for non-intrusive inspection as now active at the major Karachi terminals, as part of a wider push to cut congestion at KICT and SAPT. That is a separate change from faceless assessment, and it works on a different problem: fewer containers need to be physically opened, because more of them can be looked at with a scan first.
We would rather tell you that plainly than let the two get run together, because they are not the same reform and they do not move at the same pace.
What this looks like on your file
The mechanics of a Karachi filing under faceless assessment, from our side of it.
Declaration filed on PSW
The Goods Declaration goes in with the invoice, packing list and bill of lading attached to it.
Routed to the Central Appraising Unit
Assessment is picked up by an officer in the unit, not by anyone at the terminal the goods will move through.
A query lands as a message, or it does not
If the classification, the value or a document raises a question, it comes back against the file. If nothing does, the file moves on its own.
The query is answered the same day
Whatever is asked for, a catalogue page, a mill certificate, a clarification on value, goes back the day it is raised, because the file waits for nothing else until it does.
Assessment order, then duty
Once assessment is finished, duty and taxes are worked out and the challans are prepared, whether or not the consignment is also examined.
We used to be able to walk a query down the corridor and get it answered the same afternoon by someone we knew. That does not exist anymore for assessment. A query now joins a queue at a unit we have no seat in, behind every other file it is working, and we wait for it the same way everyone else does. What we can still control is how fast we answer once it lands, and how little in the declaration gives the unit a reason to raise one in the first place.
What counts now
Knowing somebody at a collectorate counted for something once. It counts for less now, because the officer assessing your file is not somebody you can reach, and was likely never going to be somebody you knew in the first place.
What counts instead is the declaration itself: a classification that holds up against the Pakistan Customs Tariff, a value that agrees with a current valuation ruling or is supported if it does not, and an invoice, packing list and bill of lading that all say the same thing. That file is now the entire case, because there is no conversation to fall back on if it is not.
Questions
What importers ask us about faceless assessment
Contact
Tell us what is coming.
Give us the product, the port and roughly when the vessel is due, and we will tell you what the clearance involves and what it will cost.