KARACHI: In a major shift in assessment of imported goods, the Customs announced on Wednesday that the declared value will be accepted as final in case the department fails to come up with final determination within a period of 90 days for provisionally cleared goods.

The step taken by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has fulfilled a long standing demand of trade and industry because in the past, it was the provisional determination, which was taken as final rather than the declared value.

In the past, when the customs authorities failed to come up with final determination within a period of 180 days the provisional determination used to be taken as final assessment, which is normally much higher than the value declared by an importer.

The customs under section 81 of the Customs Act, 1969 are allowed to go for a provisional determination in cases where it was not possible for an officer during the checking to satisfy himself of the correctness of the assessment of imported goods.

The objective of this provision is to defer the final assessment of such imported goods, which require chemical or other tests or a further inquiry and an officer not below the rank of assistant collector of customs is empowered to allow provisional determination of duty, taxes and other charges payable on such goods.

In some cases the law also allowed customs valuation department to further extend the period for final determination by another 90 days, which kept trade and industry under pressure and uncertain situation for a long time.

However, the FBR has now reduced this period and only 90 days are given to customs valuation department to come up with a final determination for provisionally assessed goods.

Member Customs Munir Qureshi has also directed valuation department to update valuation advices because even today goods are being cleared on advices pertaining to last five years, which in no way reflect actual transactional value as required by GATT’s code of valuation.

The Member also issued a cut off date for updating valuation advices and directed the valuation department to issue fresh advices after which all the old advices will cease to exist.

This will help trade and industry to save huge amounts towards customs duty, taxes and other charges because new valuation advices will be based on current market prices for determining valuation of imported goods.

FPCCI standing committee in liaison with FBR Sheikh Shakil Ahmed Dhingra appreciating the move said it would help a lot to ease liquidity problem of the trade as huge funds used to be blocked with customs for a long period.

He said revision and updating of valuation advices would also benefit trade because currently, prices of all sort of goods and commodities all over the world have declined considerably and duty and taxes would be paid accordingly.