KARACHI: Pakistan Customs has detected mass under-invoicing on goods imported from India and an exercise to recover evaded revenue has been initiated.
According to details, in November 2015 Appraising Officers Ameer Nasir Ali and Hamood-ur-Rehman approached then Collector MCC Appraisement East Majid Yousafani reporting that goods imported from India were being largely under-invoiced and mentioned the official website of Indian government, which is a commercial portal of Central Board of Excise & Customs India.
This portal records all the details of exports and imports, when certain goods declaration and shipping bill numbers thereof were checked at www.icegate.gov.in, it was found that the values declared by the importers before Pakistan Customs were way too less than the values declared at the time of export before Indian Customs.
Subsequently, Majid Yousafani assigned two Additional Collectors Haris Ansari and Irfan Wahid to scrutinize the import data of goods from India to ascertain whether there was any revenue recoverable.
Additional Collectors in their report confirmed that mass under-invoicing was being carried on the goods imported from India. Majid Yousafani issued an Assessment Alert advising all field formations to consult the Indian website while making assessment a well as he wrote to Director Customs Valuation to revise the values of goods.
The then Director Customs Valuation Manzoor Memon, Additional Director Iqbal Munir and Principal Appraiser Hafiz Mohammad Jokhio after due deliberations revised the customs values of several goods imported from India in line with the values available at www.icegate.gov.in. Moreover, values of goods coming from Dubai were also revised because most of Indian origin goods come to Pakistan via Dubai.
Collector MCC Appraisement East Ashad Jawwad is continuing this revenue recovery campaign and because of this exercise several cases have been established and MCC Appraisement East alone have served around 20 contravention for adjudication creating demand of hundreds of millions of rupees, which was evaded through this scam.
It may be mentioned here that goods imported from India and are being under-invoiced include fabric, lubricants, jewelry etc.
It is worth mentioning here that Collector Adjudication Chaudry Mohammad Jawaid spared all the opportunity to the fabric importers in six cases to prove their claim that the values mentioned by www.icegate.gov.in were not correct and the exporters in India over-invoiced the exports in order to claim 17 percent export rebate. However, none of the importers submitted any evidence of the payment made to Indian exporters, which could verify their claim. Collector Adjudication has imposed fines and penalty on six different fabric importers.
Directorate of Post Clearance Audit (PCA) Karachi has served contravention on a number of traders importing tyre and tube from India for evading government’s legitimate revenue to the tune of Rs350 million through under-invoicing.
Scrutiny of import data of several traders, conducted by Director PCA Gul Rehman, revealed that they had imported declared to be “tyres and tubes, with or without flaps of different brands” of Indian origin, under different sub heads of PCT heading 4011 through different collectorates.
In these cases, the assessment has been made as per Valuation Ruling applicable at the time of import. However, in pursuance of information that the group under invoicing is being carried out, the matter was investigated taking into consideration the official website www.icegate.gov.in e-commerce portal central board of excise and customs.