July 21, 2007	Saturday	Rajab 05, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 20: A local manufacturer of Farm Milk Chillers (FMCs) has approached the National Tariff Commission (NTC) seeking removal of tariff anomaly pertaining to the FMCs.

Unitech International (Pvt) Ltd urged the NTC for re-imposition of customs duty applicable to FMCs prior to August 2005.

The applicant’s request is based on the grounds that it is registered manufacturer of FMCs for capacities up to 2,500 litres. The FMC above 3,000 litres capacity were importable at zero customs duty through a notification SRO575 of 2005.

For formally considering the application, the NTC has decided to hold public hearing on July 31, 2007 on the issue of re-imposition of customs duty applicable to FMCs. The interested parties have been advised to bring their comments and suggestions in writing in this connection.

The comments and suggestions may be supported with essential facts, information and supporting-evidence, which must be brought to the public hearing.

According to the applicant, the indigenous FMC industry got into problem after issuance of another SRO of 2005 issued on August 6, 2005 amending the SRO575 of 2OO5, wherein the line “milk chillers above 3,000 litres” was replaced with “milk chillers irrespective of the fact whether manufactured locally or not”.

The reason conveyed for this reduction of customs duty was the huge projected requirement of FMCs during subsequent period compared with the production capacity available locally.

The present market demand for FMCs is just 37 per cent of the local production capacity which means that local industry could also meet the growing demand if any. The local industry is utilising only 29 per cent of existing capacity to manufacture FMCs and 21 per cent of market demand of FMCs was met through imports.