The government is likely to establish customs wings in ten foreign missions of the country aiming to check money laundering and evasion of duties.
These countries are-USA, India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Italy and Thailand.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has chosen the missions considering the import and export volume.
The wings will be attached to Bangladesh missions in these countries.
Currently, Bangladesh has only one wing of this type, in Belgium.
According to the sources in NBR and Finance Division, after getting proposal from the NBR to set up ten customs wings the Internal Resource Division has sent it to the Finance Division.
“The Finance Division sought some queries in this regard,” a senior official of the NBR told UNB.
As per the proposal, there will be a need to create posts of four additional commissioners, six joint commissioners, ten office assistant cum computer operators and ten drivers for these ten offices. “There will be no need to take offices for these ten wings as Bangladesh already has missions in these ten countries and the NBR wings will act as an additional wing in these mission, so there is no need to rent structure or construct it,” he said. The senior official also said that these foreign wings will help the country to check money laundering matters as this has become a great concern across the globe. The official also alleged that money has been laundered from the country through under-invoicing during export and over-invoicing while importing.
He mentioned that a section of dishonest businessmen are involved in money laundering for evading tax. “So NBR has taken the initiative to contain import and export through false statement, smuggling, money laundering, customs related corruption and financing in terrorism,” the NBR official said. According to the sources, the NBR had given the proposal to create customs official posts in different missions in 2010. “Due to the rise of money laundering from Bangladesh, getting advices from the higher section of the government NBR has taken the initiative again,” the NBR official said. He also mentioned that these offices will help the national exchequer to improve the collection of duties in import level. “These offices will, of course, help the government to improve its revenue collection, no doubt about it,” he said. The NBR has got a gigantic target of Tk 2,03,212 crore during the current fiscal which is 35.4 percent higher than the revised target of the 2015-16 fiscal.
VAT will be the biggest contributor with Tk 72,764 crore. Tk 71,940 crore will come from income tax and tax on profit, supplementary duty will contribute Tk 30,075 crore, excise duty Tk 4,449 crore, export duty Tk 44 crore and other taxes and duties will contribute Tk 1,428 crore.
According to a report of US based Global Financial Integrity (GFI), illegal capital flight from Bangladesh increased 33.78 percent year-on-year to $9.66 billion in 2013 through trade under- and over-invoicing and other channels.
Of the amount, $8.35 billion or over 86 percent was siphoned off through trade invoicing, while the remaining $1.31 billion could not be traced in the balance of payments data.
The illegal outflow stood at $7.23 billion in 2012, according to a revised estimate of the GFI report. The Washington-based research and advisory organisation published the report titled “Illegal Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2004-2013 in December 2015. On average, $5.59 billion was siphoned out of Bangladesh a year between 2004 and 2013. This high amount of illegal capital outflow puts Bangladesh at 26th position among 149 countries in the latest GFI ranking of economies exporting illegal capital. Bangladesh was ranked 51st on the previous list. Trade misinvoicing is defined by GFI as a method for moving money illegally across borders that involves deliberately misreporting the value of a commercial transaction on an invoice submitted to customs. The GFI report shows that the illegal capital outflow from Bangladesh tripled in 2013 from $3.35 billion in 2004. According to the GFI, illegal financial flows are illegal movements of money or capital from one country to another. The organisation classifies this movement as an illegal flow when the funds are illegally earned, transferred or utilised.
According to the GFI, measurable illegal flows stem from two sources: trade misinvoicing and other unrecorded flows.
Trade misinvoicing takes into account export under-invoicing and import over-invoicing, while a second source of illegal flows includes leaks from the balance of payments system.
