January 23, 2007	Tuesday	Muharram 03, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Jan 22: The collection of customs duty from eight major revenue spinners has declined due to more than 20 per cent negative growth in imports during the first half of the fiscal year 2006-07 (July-December) over the same period last year.

Official figures released here on Monday by the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) indicated that due to decline in imports from these sources, the over-all customs duty collection dipped by 1.4 per cent to Rs60.655 billion during the period under review as against Rs61.496 billion over the same period last year.

The shortfall in customs duty collection was mainly due to reduction in import of some of the major revenue spinners which included iron and iron steel (-32.5pc) pharmaceutical products (-28.3pc), vehicles other than railways (-9.1 pc) organic chemical (-20.5pc), miscellaneous chemical products (-12.3pc), man-made filaments (-6.5pc), rubber and articles thereof (-5.3pc).

However, some items have shown considerable growth in imports in the first half of current financial year, which include electrical machinery and equipments (27.1pc), essential oil and resinoids (26.71pc), man-made staple fibres (10.8pc) soap, organic surface-active (8.0pc), coffee, tea and spices (5.8pc).

The statistics showed that the total imports during the first half of 2006-07 were Rs902 billion as compared to Rs817 billion during the same period last year.

Of these dutiable imports, however, were Rs509 billion as compared to Rs516 billion during the same period of the last year indicating a shortfall of one per cent.

Duty-free imports in 2006 were to the tune of Rs393 billion as compared to Rs301 billion last year, an increase of more than Rs92 billion.