KARACHI: A division bench of High Court of Sindh (SHC) headed by Justice Munib Akhtar on Tuesday allowed a constitutional petition filed by importers of soap basic material and ordered provisional release of the items after payment of differential amount of custom duty and other taxes.
Abdullah & Company, Fahad Enterprises, Trading House, and Shahzak Multinational citing Collector Customs, West, filed the petition appraisement, Director Valuation and Director General Valuation as respondents. The petitioners maintained that they have imported different consignments from different countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, and UAE. The customs resorted to arbitrary fixing of custom value under Valuation Ruling 737 0f 2015 dated 27-5-2015 suppressing Valuation Ruling 702/ 2014. The counsel for petitioner sought provisional release of goods pending decision regarding valuation.
When the petition came up for hearing, Masooda Wahab advocate, counsel for Customs submitted that petitioner have went into an appeal before the customs appellate tribunal and they can file an application before the tribunal for interim relief.
The bench however ordered customs to release the goods on provisional basis. The bench also ordered that the petition would be heard with the Special Customs Reference Applications (SCRA’s) on the identical issue. The bench later put of further hearing until Jan 13, 2016.