The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has given March 31, 2006 as deadline to all the collectors of customs to release 'bank guarantees' and 'indemnity bonds' submitted by importers involving billions of rupees.
Official sources told Business Recorder on Tuesday that the CBR has issued the directive following internal audit of bank guarantees/indemnity bonds record available with the collectorates of customs.
There are a large number of cases where customs were bound to release the indemnity bonds where 5 percent customs duty was paid on clearance of machinery/equipment under the relevant notifications.
The collectors of customs failed to pay attention to this issue, which resulted in piling up of pending cases, involving huge amounts. Now, the CBR has given last date of March 31 to all collectors to release all such pending cases, sources said.
They said that CBR Chairman had directed the collectors of customs during the quarterly collectors' conference, held in May last year, to maintain computerised record of bank guarantees. This was necessary to avoid expiry of post-dated cheques and bank guarantees. It was also directed that the collectors should remain vigilant and regularly monitor the record pertaining to these bank guarantees.
Internal audit of bank guarantees/ indemnity bonds revealed that most of the pending cases remained unchecked by the collectors of customs. The importers had submitted the necessary documents including 'installation certificates' etc for the release of 'bank guarantees' in a number of cases. But, the concerned collectorates have not released these guarantees and the stuck up amount has reached billions of rupees.
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