The Federal Board of Revenue has authorised four technology vendors to supply, install, operate, maintain, and repair electronic production monitoring equipment at manufacturing facilities across five key industrial sectors, marking a significant expansion of the tax authority’s real-time surveillance of domestic production activity. The sectors covered under the authorisation are packaged tea, household electronics, paper and paperboard, edible oil and ghee, and leather, all of which have been identified as areas where production underreporting and tax evasion have historically been difficult to detect and verify through conventional audit mechanisms. The four authorised vendors are Obsidian Technologies, Tollink Pakistan Private Limited, ISSM Labelling Solutions Private Limited, and Authentik.
The technical requirements set out in the notification are specific and demanding. Each deployment must include Internet Protocol cameras capable of continuously capturing production processes in real time, alongside Network Video Recorders with storage capacity sufficient to retain at least two months of uninterrupted footage. The Federal Board of Revenue is to be given direct access to both live camera feeds and recorded footage as prescribed under the authorisation, giving the tax authority a persistent, real-time window into manufacturing activity at each site without requiring physical inspection visits for routine monitoring. Vendors are required to conduct equipment testing at every site, confirm that all installations meet the Federal Board of Revenue’s approved technical specifications, and are prohibited from supplying or billing for any equipment or software beyond the specified cameras and recorders.
Each authorised vendor must complete deployment in the relevant sectors only after the Federal Board of Revenue issues the corresponding Sales Tax General Order for that specific sector, providing a staged rollout that allows the authority to sequence the camera installation process across different industries. The authorisation issued to the four vendors is valid for three years from the date of issuance, subject to suspension or cancellation, and importantly supplements rather than replaces their existing authorisations, which remain in force under their original terms. The authorisation is explicitly non-transferable, meaning vendors cannot assign, transfer, or subcontract it in whole or in part without written prior approval from the Approval Committee, a condition that ensures accountability remains with the named entities throughout the deployment period.
All footage and recordings captured under the monitoring framework will remain the property of the Federal Board of Revenue, classified as confidential, and cannot be shared with any party except as expressly directed by the Board. For industries that have long operated in an environment of limited third-party verification of actual production volumes, the installation of Federal Board of Revenue-owned continuous video surveillance at manufacturing sites represents a qualitative shift in the enforcement posture of Pakistan’s tax administration, one that complements the digital track-and-trace systems already deployed in sectors like cigarettes and beverages and signals an intent to extend real-time production visibility across a broader sweep of Pakistan’s manufacturing base.
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