November 14, 2002	Thursday	Ramazan 8, 1423

ISLAMABAD, Nov 13: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has yet to release Rs3.023 billion of duty drawback claims pending for July-October period of current financial year.

The amount was withheld against the 57850 duty drawback claims made during the same period this year, according to official figures made available to Dawn on Wednesday.

The payment of duty drawback paid to exporters has fallen by 16 per cent during the July-October period of the current financial year to Rs7.425 billion this year against Rs8.844 billion paid during the same period last year.

This showed that despite the claims of the tax authorities to have given maximum duty drawback to exporters the clearance of pending claims was slow as compared to that of last year.

Further break-up of the statistics showed that the number of pending claims of duty drawback in July 2002 was 74288 against pending claims of 57850 in October, which meant that the tax authorities have cleared only 16,418 duty drawback claims of exporters during the four months of the current financial year.

On monthly basis, the statistics showed that the tax authorities paid Rs2.148 billion duty drawback to exporters in October this year against Rs2.395 billion it paid to exporters during the same month last year, showing a decrease of 10.31 per cent.

According to the statistics, the tax authorities cleared 10282 pending duty drawback claims during the same month this year.

An official source in the CBR told Dawn that the pendency was to be cleared during the next few months. He said that the amount pending against duty drawback claims was due to the incomplete documents or process.

The official said that in case of customs, the main hurdle to processing and disposal of rebate claim was the lack of sufficient knowledge about the claims filed.

There was no unique reference number, which made it difficult to keep track on what has been filed, when it was filed and to whom it pertained, said the official.