ISLAMABAD, June 13: The government has introduced 10 new sections in the Customs Act 1969 along with modifying some existing clauses to further liberalize trade.
Through the Finance Ordinance 2005, the government proposed a new section 18B to be inserted in the customs act to provide a statutory coverage to the notification issued for the purpose of concessionary rate of duty under preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and free trade agreements (FTAs).
It has been proposed that in cases where the recoverable amount was less than Rs100, customs shall not initiate the recovery action. In order to provide relief to the person who pays the duty/tax due from him the collector may be empowered to compound the offence.
Under section 33 of the Act, the period for claiming refund was six months. This period was proposed to be enhanced to one year.
No legal provision was available in the Act, whereby any fine, penalty or surcharge could be remitted in any deserving case. An amendment was proposed in section 19 of the Act.
A new section 19A was proposed to be introduced regarding presumption that any person who has paid the duty and taxes under this Act shall be deemed to have passed on the full incidence of such duty and taxes to the buyer as part of the price of such goods unless the contrary was proved.
It has been proposed that the amount of duty, interest, penalty, fine or any other sum payable, and the amount of refund, drawback or any other sum due, under the provisions of this Act should be rounded off to the nearest Rs100 and, for this purpose, where such amount was Rs50 or more, it should be increased to Rs100 and if such part was less than Rs50, it should be ignored.
An addition in section 20 was required to enable the government to remit any fine, penalty or charged etc., in any deserving case.
A new proviso was proposed to be added after sub-para (c) underlining that no repayment might be granted in a case in which the amount involved was less than Rs100.
Further, it was proposed that a new sub-para (d) might be added after the present section 21 empowering the federal government to disallow repayment in respect of goods which were likely to be re-entered into Pakistan through unauthorized routes or to impose certain conditions or restrictions.
It has been proposed that the word “detention” may be added in section 17 to enable field formations to detain the suspected goods/vehicles before formal seizure for verification of import documents, chassis/engine numbers etc.
Through the finance bill, it has been proposed to amend section 18(2) of the Customs Act to allow the federal government to impose regulatory duty (RD) on any export/import item without seeking the National Tariff Commission’s (NTC) recommendations.
Section 25(14) allowed the
Central Board of revenue (CBR) to fix the minimum customs values for importation or exportation of goods. In view of the international obligations under the WTO Valuation Agreement, this sub-section has been omitted to make the statutory provision WTO compliant.
Section 27 of the Customs Act allows abatement in duty on damaged or deteriorated goods but it did not allow any abatement on short landing or short shipment of goods. It was, therefore, proposed that section 27 might be amended that if the appropriate officer was satisfied with regard to the bona fide of short shipment/short landed goods he might allow abatement in duty proportionate to the goods short landed/short found on first examination.
It has been proposed that a new section 27A may be introduced to allow, upon the request of the importer, the denaturing or mutilation or scrapping of imported goods which were ordinarily used for more than one purposes under certain rules so as to render them unfit for one or more such purposes; and where any goods were so denatured or mutilated or scrapped they shall be chargeable to duty at such rate as would be applicable if the goods had been imported in the denatured or mutilated form or as scrap.
The shipping agents/owners of the vessels have a pivotal role in the trade traffic. There is need to regulate these activities for convenience of the stakeholders. A procedure is proposed to be prescribed through addition of section 72A in the Customs Act.
Collector of Customs is competent authority to declare and allow re-export of frustrated cargo. In case of non-availability of collector the matter gets delayed. In order to expeditious and smooth disposal of bona fide frustrated cargo, Additional Collector of Customs may be empowered to allow it. The Section may be amended accordingly. The proposal will facilitate the trading community.
