KARACHI: Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Nisar Mohammad Khan and Governor State Bank of Pakistan Ashraf Wathra will sign the MoU regarding implementation of E-Import Form on Tuesday.
Members FBR and executive members of central bank would be present while Finance Minister Ishaq Dar would also grace the occasion. Director Fareed Iqbal Qureshi and Deputy Director Naveed Abbas Memon have prepared the module for the implementation of E-Import Form, which aims at eliminating under-invoicing, over-invoicing and transfer pricing.
This is part of the greater scheme of bringing Pakistan to self reliancy. Government has already launched a campaign against smuggling. Customs Valuation is also streamlining the values of importable goods to plug revenue leakage.
Ishaq Dar has said that country would not go to IMF again and in order to broaden tax net and increase revenue, government has imposed higher taxes on non-filers while revaluation of immovable property and taxes thereof are introduced.
Official said flow of outward remittances was a major issue and the authorities were unable to track most of the outward remittances made by importers.
So far the central bank and Customs can only record the transactions made through letter of credit (LC) but imports on advance payments as well as deferred payments are not tracked.
Under-invoicing is another serious issue and government is deprived of significant revenue every year. The official said a lot of imports were cleared on under-declared values, but with the I-Form module, Customs would have the actual transaction value on the screen and importers would not be able to under-declare the values of their consignments.
Official said the project would also help central bank in its forex management exercise as the regulator would know authentic demand of dollars by importers in a given period of time, which would help central bank in policy making for next such period.
The official said this would also facilitate importers as the entire system is web-based and the importers would be able to apply for I-Form with their respective bank online and upload the same in WebOC online.