KARACHI: The Ministry of Finance has finalized several statutory regulatory orders (SROs), which would be notified shortly effecting drastic changes in concessionary imports regime and duty structure for various products.

Sources said that certain SROs have already been communicated with the Customs authorities and uploaded in the system. These would be in affect, once officially notified.

According to details reaching Customnews.pk, the Ministry of Finance and Revenue has decided to reduce the regulatory duty on import of furnace oil to 2.0 percent down from the existing 7.0 percent.

Sources in the Ministry informed that the decision has been finalized and an official notification to this effect would follow soon.

In April this year, the federal government had increased the regulatory duty on furnace oil import to 7.0 percent vide SRO 393(I)/2015, which suppressed SRO 132(I)/2015 notified in February 2015, according to which the regulatory duty was 5.0 percent on furnace oil import.

Moreover, the Ministry of Finance has rescinded SRO 559(I)/2008 vis-a-vis duty/tax exemptions on the import of raw material for the manufacturing of toilet soap and laundry soap, which include palm stearin, coconut crude oil, crude palm kemel oil, PFAD, palm kernel acid oil, fatty acid distillate and surface active agents.

Moreover, the government has also decided to withdraw exemptions on temporary importation of certain goods for subsequent exportation.

The complete exemption of duty and tax was available to packing material (excluding straw, paper, paper cones, glass wool and like material) for packing of goods;

Polypropylene woven and jute bags subject to the condition that such bags bear the particulars of the Pakistani exporters in permanent print on each bag;

Materials for general superficial processes such as elementary repairs, cleaning, removal of damaged parts, sorting, straining, sifting, clarification, filtering, marking, sealing, labeling, re-packing, drying, preserving, refrigerating, chilling, fumigating, greasing, anti-rusting, protective coating, printing etc;

Materials for the manufacture of decorative items, through the process of cutting, knotting or any other process, to be used in gift packs, toys and sweets/chocolate boxes, etc., for decoration purposes;

Materials, sub-components and components for the manufacture of stationery items like pencils, glue sticks, fiber tip pens and staples, etc.

Now, the statutory rate of duty i.e. 20 percent would be applicable on these products.