KARACHI: Federal Board of Revenue FBR has notified procedure for clearance of goods imported by industrial units of erstwhile FATA/PATA, and issued CGO No. 05/2021 in this regard.
Necessary instructions have already been issued by Directorate General Transit Trade to M/s. TPL Trakker (Pvt.) Ltd., for manually installing tracking devices for the subject consignments and to ensure en route tracking and monitoring till the development of the functionality in the WeBOC system.
However, keeping in view the processing of such consignments in the Collectorates and non-availability of access to their data by the Directorate of Transit Trade in the WeBOC system, it is suggested that such consignments may be cleared in the system by the respective Collectorates only after implementation of the required condition as prescribed in the CGO.
In this regard since control mechanism for clearance of such consignments lies with the Collectorates, they may accordingly get the written confirmation from the concerned clearing agents / bonded carriers regarding the installation of tracking device by M/s. TPL Trakker (Pvt.) Ltd., before clearing the consignments in the WeBOC system.
It may be mentioned here that industrial units in FATA were given sales tax exemptions on supplies. Later, Peshawar high Court also granted exemption of sales tax on imports by these manufacturers.
However, the exemptions were largely being misused. Goods that are not consumed in FATA and by the manufacturers in FATA were being imported in large quantity and the same were then being sold in the commercial market.
Last year in October, local manufacturers raised hue and cry regarding clearance of banned goods such as Indian fabric imported via Dubai, and import of other goods with sales tax exemptions.
Subsequently, MCC Port Qasim stopped certain consignments destined for FATA and approached DG I&I seeking to address the issue.
An official said the CGO would control the misuse of exemptions and pilferage of goods during transit goods, however, the examination and assessment at dry ports in KPK was not logical due to shortage of space and resources.