Al Amin :
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is going to take legal action against the bonded licence holders, who supply imported raw materials to international tenders in the country by taking duty-free facility instead of producing or exporting finished-goods.
Identifying the licence holders, the NBR has sent letters to the customs bond commissionerates recently.
In the letter, the commissionerates have been asked to submit explanation within seven working days after receiving the letter on how the businesses have managed the bonded warehouse licence.
NBR said it is noticed that some bonded licence holders import raw materials by taking duty-free facility but they don’t produce finished goods with the raw materials, the letter said.
Even, without exporting goods, they participate in the international tenders in the country or supply raw materials to the tender bidders as a local agent, it said.
Besides, the businesses don’t pay Value-Added Tax (VAT) against the earned commission from supplying raw materials as a local agent, the letter read.
Following this, the government is losing a huge amount of remittance and revenue. On other hand, the businesses are abusing the facility, it said.Under this circumstance, the customs bond commissionerates have been asked to submit the list of such licence holders with explanation on how the businesses have got the licence, according to the letter.
NBR officials said that such kind of misuse of duty-free facility is mainly occurred in the country’s shipbuilder sector and mega projects.
“We will take action against the licence holders after proper investigation for misusing the duty-free facility as a huge amount of revenue is involved with the abuse,” an official said, whishing his anonymity.
There are some 6684 bonded licence holders in the country who are allowed to import raw materials under the duty-free facility for exporting finished goods.
Of them, around 3000 are now active while the rest are either non-existent or the customs locked their BINs for some irregularities.
It is also alleged that some businessmen misused the bonded warehouse facility by selling the duty-free imported raw materials and finished goods to the local market.
Licence holders also sometimes used fake addresses to escape the monitoring mechanism of the customs authorities.
Some alleged businessmen also do not maintain records that show their export and import activities to abuse the facility.
However, the government has recently taken steps to bring bond activities under the automated system.
Under the system, the issuance of bond licences, file movement register, utilisation declaration (UD) and lean bank activities will be done online.
Officials hoped that automation will help check irregularities in renewing licence and setting import limits.
The bonded warehouse licence is given to import raw materials without any duty charges against a commitment of exporting the finished products. It aims to make exports more competitive.
All the imported goods are stored at the bond holder’s warehouses and in case of failure to export, importers are to pay duty charges and taxes for the rest of the goods imported.
