A section of dishonest traders have allegedly been showing less value of imported clothes than the real price with a view to depriving the government of huge revenue earnings over the years. On the other hand, the local textile industries are facing uneven competition because of the syndicate’s import forgery.
A news report on Friday, quoting reliable sources, said that the corrupt importers deliberately showed less import price of their consignments and the rest of the amounts were sent to exporters through hundi, an illegal channel of sending money, or in collusion with a section of bank officials. In this way, thousands of crores of taka are being siphoned off abroad because of false declaration of import value of apparels and other goods.
Experts, however, said that the scenario would be reversed from over-invoicing to under-invoicing if one wishes to build up money abroad in the garb of exports, especially exports on which no subsidy is available. The technique in that case would be under-invoicing the exported consignment with arrangement to collect the money from the consignee who usually is his partner in crime.
The report said that the Ministry of Commerce has recently ordered the Tariff Commission to review the matter following the demand of the textile industry owners. After the review, the Tariff Commission on December 10 sent two suggestions to the ministry. They are: Tariff of imported clothes be fixed as per international market price and the measurement standard of imported oven clothes be set at metres instead of existing kilograms.
It is to be noted that there is gulf of differences between the prices of the imported clothes at wholesale and retail markets. In absence of accountability, the government is being deprived of huge revenues and the textile industry owners as well as the customers are also being cheated.
According to the National Board of Revenue (NBR), businesses imported 3,35,793 matric tonnes of clothes in the fiscal 2019-20. Of them, 2,97,199 matrtic tonnes were imported for export as finished products without any tax while 38,594 matric tonnes imported for commercial purposes with 90 per cent tax.
To make a sense of monitoring exports and imports it is absolutely necessary to switch to the digital system under which, instead of exporters or importers, customs will directly feed the information electronically to Bangladesh Bank. But allegations are there that bureaucrats may resist any change as they have vested interests in the chaos in which they exist.
