Al Amin :
The Duty Exemption and Drawback Office (DEDO) of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has settled over 15,000 claims for drawback of duties and taxes against imports made by the foreign agencies and embassies to increase the country’s image to the missions.
It settled the claims from 17 January- 6 February this year, officials said.
They said the claim settlement for drawback of duties was the highest.
“At least two thousand such drawback claims are being settled every day and the number is increasing gradually, despite having manpower shortage and insufficient budget,” Belal Hossain Chowdhury, the newly appointed Director General (DG) of DEDO told The New Nation yesterday.
The DEDO works with 48 foreign agencies including United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Labour Organization (ILO), and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) and foreign embassies.
The DEDO’s officials said around 25,000 claims of the drawback of duties and taxes against imports made by the foreign missions have been waiting to settle for long time, tarnishing image of the country to the foreign missions.
According to DEDO, it refunded Tk 49 crore against 442 drawback claims in the nine months of last fiscal year (2020-2021) and Tk 57 crore against 293 claims in July-December period of the current fiscal year.
Around 5,000 claims remained unsettled and the number of the unsettled claims started piling up as the import of raw materials has surged in recent times.
Following this situation, the DEDO’s new administration has taken a crash programme to dispose the long-awaited drawback claims on priority basis to uphold the country’s image.
Under the close monitoring by DEDO DG, the NBR agency has done a tremendous task by settling over 15,000 drawback claims worth Tk 20 crore, the officials said.
In order to settle the claims of the foreign mission, it sent letters to the concerned VAT Commissionerates for verification of VAT related information and to get the clarifications within a shortest possible time, the officials talked to the concerned persons over phone.
“Image of the country is involved with the settlement of the drawback claims made by the foreigners. They don’t feel better, if it takes time to dispose the claims,” said Belal.
The DEDO is also the legal body of the revenue board for determining the coefficient required for calculating the refundable duty exporters’ payment on imported raw materials with the implementation of the new Value-Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 from July 1.
It issues coefficients to the exporters to facilitate provision of refunds and to keep export activities uninterrupted.
It refunds the duty and VAT by cross-checking whether the exporters have properly used the raw materials in production and export the products.
“DEDO will able to clear up most of the unsettled refund claims made the local and foreign importers, if the NBR removes manpower crisis and allocate sufficient budget,” Belal said.
