KARACHI: Justice Muhammad Junaid Ghaffar of High Court of Sindh on Monday disposed of a suit filed by The Hawks, importer of steel bars, directing the Director, Custom Valuation to decide the issue of valuation Ruling within 30 days.
The plaintiff maintained in the suit that they have imported steel bars including rebars, deformed bars where boron of chromium has been added. The consignment landed from China under Free Trade Agreement and valuation was sought under PCT codes 7228.3090, 7228.4000 and 7228. 6000 (alloy ribbed steel bars). The plaintiff maintained that value was to be tabulated from London Metal Bulletin, a publication of London Metal Exchange. The plaintiff filed the GD under Valuation Ruling 545 of 2013 dated 26-3-2013. The defendants however on 29-1-2015 after more than 22 months passed a Valuation Ruling VR 712 0f 2015. The defendants held in the VR that for imports other than China, valuation would be determined based on LMB plus cost of freight while in case of import from China it would be LMB plus 15 per cent of LMB, which is on very higher side.
The Custom Valuation represented by Masooda Siraj and Zafar Hussain Mirza advocate questioned the maintainability of the suit under section 217 of the Customs Act 1969. They further maintained that plaintiff has approached SHC without exhausting remedy of revision under section 25-D of the Customs Act.
The bench after hearing the sides disposed of the suit with the direction to the defendant Director Customs Valuation to decide the case of the plaintiff within 30 days.