Al Amin :
The government is losing crores of revenue due to the lack of proper implementation Finance Bill-2020 by the National Board of Revenue (NBR), experts said.
An unholy nexus between customs officials and dishonest importer-exporter and failure to proper implementation of the finance bill are mainly responsible for the illegal trade which causes evasion of thousands of crores taka duty.
Preventing duty evasion through false declaration, the government incorporated two provisions in the Customs Act-1969 through the Finance Bill-2020 in the last budget session increasing penalty on exporters and importers for making false declaration.
The revenue board also made mandatory submission of bill of entry to customs house within five working days after arrival of imported goods at ports. But the customs authorities have yet to be implemented the law and thus the government losing crores of money.
The bill said, “Such person shall be liable to a penalty at least twice but not exceeding four times the amount of the tax evaded in respect of which such offence is committed and such goods shall be liable to confiscation.”
According to NBR data, generally most of the export and import activities are done by the Chattogram Customs House and Dhaka Customs House and the incidents of the duty evasion are occurring increasingly in the two houses.
Syed Aminul Karim, former NBR Member told The New Nation, “The evasion is happening due to the lack of skilled and honest officials in the field level. There are many strict laws to prevent the evasion but there is no implementation of the laws properly.”
“So the strong monitoring of the Central Intelligence Cell of the NBR needs to be beefed up to prevent the duty evasion,” he added.
The NBR sent letters to the Customs House(s) asking information in this regard several times. Lastly on December 1, it sent similar letter to houses asking information on goods that have been fined for making false declaration in the first five months of the current fiscal year.
But most of the Customs House(s) have yet to be responded to the letter as what they said it takes time to combine the five months’ information in the report.
NBR officials said that the reason behind the delaying to respond the letter is that the name of the importers, who have taken special benefits by the officials, might be disclosed if the NBR scrutinize the information.
Syed Golam Kibria, Member of Customs policy and ICT of the NBR, said that the letter has been sent to the Customs House(s) but not sure about specific number of response so far.
Dr Iftekharuzzaman, Executive Director of the Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), said, “Inefficient and corrupt officials are involved with the duty evasion. That’s why, they fear to respond to the letter.”
“As per law, NBR can take action against the officials, if it wants,” he said.
