April 14, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25, 1428

KARACHI, April 13: Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) Justice (retd) Munir A Sheikh has assured exporters that he will take suo motu action against the freight forwarders for issuing wrong house bill of lading (B/L) thereby changing the title and ownerships of export consignments.

He will also inspect the records of Sales Tax department to verify the issues raised by exporters with regard to delays and non-payment of refund claims.

This was stated by the FTO at a dinner meeting organised by the Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers Association (PHMA) here on Thursday. In response to complaints and issues raised by many exporters Justice Munir said that as a matter of fact business community did not fully utilize the FTO Office to sort out their problems.

Despite the fact that the FTO Office has been set up for resolving irritants confronted by business community but for some reasons this forum was not fully utilised to their benefit. He said that issues raised by exporters were not brought up before the FTO and now suo moto action will be taken to resolve them.

The FTO was critical of the business community for not coming forward and lodge complaints against the malpractices and irregularities being committed by government departments and the bureaucracy on fear of facing wrath and intimidation from the official machinery.

He said that those who approached the FTO Office with regard to non payment of refund claims were given relief but it seems that still a large number of exporters are confronted with this issue.

The exporters complained that under one pretext or the other the Sales Tax department had been delaying refund payments and at times they ask exporters for an audit of suppliers and to others they say that the respective supplier had been blacklisted, therefore, their refund claims could not be paid.

To a point raised by a PHMA member, the FTO said that his office could not deal with and challenge administrative orders and if it was a law case it should be referred to the court of law.

He said that since August 2000, when the office of FTO was established with the promulgation of the Ordinance, 9,293 complaints were instituted by the aggrieved taxpayers up to March 2007. Out of these 8,948 complaints have been disposed of and only 345 are in process.

Justice Munir said that 714 review applications were also filed by taxpayers and the revenue division. While 698 review applications have been decided leaving only 16 applications in the process of finalisation.

On the face of it, he said, the number of complaints may not seem very large but it was necessary to clarify that in several cases the decisions of this office have led to the disposal of a large number of similar and identical pending cases.

Central Chairman PHMA Naqi Bari raised the issue of consolidators and forwarders and said that they were committing great fraud in connivance with the shipping lines and violating the rules while the customs having knowledge of the same remains indifferent to the issue.

PHMA zonal chairman Saleem Parekh drew the attention of the FTO towards delays and flimsy demands of the sale tax department on the issue of refunds and said that million of rupees of export trade was stuck up.

Zubair Motiwala was all critical about the government policies wherein they hold back billions of rupees of business community in refunds and use it as an interest free loan.

Citing a couple of examples Motiwala said that Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) on several occasions recommended cut in gas prices but the government for months did not issue notification. However, when it comes to raising of gas tariff the government machinery even works on holidays and issue notifications. Similar is the case with National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra), he added.