Tariff relief on import of 26 items cancelled

Withdrawing tariff concession on import of 26 items, the government has levied statutory rate of customs duty on these items, including certain pharmaceutical raw materials, to give protection to local industry. The CBR has amended SRO 567(I) 2006 of June 5, 2006 through a notification issued on Monday.
In 2006-07 budget proposals, the Board had brought down customs duty to zero percent on the import of 16 items, while duty was reduced by 10 to 5 percent on import of 8 items besides tariff concessions to different sectors under SRO 567(I) 2006. However, the concession was subject to these items being ''not manufactured locally''.
Following presentations by local manufacturers pertaining to 26 items, the Board has restored the tariff protection to local sectors.
Through amending the SRO, the Board has excluded these items from its concessionary regime available under SRO 567(I) 2006.
Thus, the customs duty, as specified in Pakistan Customs Tariff (PCT) would now be applicable on the import of citric acid, synthetic organic tanning substances, tanning preparations based on chromium sulphate, acid dyes for leather, synthetic organic products of a kind used as fluorescent brightening agents, other whiting agent, ink for ink jet engraver, preparations for treatment of leather containing oil, fat liquors, wax for wax jet engraver, printing gum, shoe adhesives, hot melt adhesive, printing gum falling under the PCT heading 3809.9300, printing gum (PCT heading 3505.2010), printing gum, (PCT heading 3506.9110), finishing agents (dye-carriers) for leather, pigment thickener and submersible motors of stainless steel machine.
The Board has also excluded certain items including raw materials of the pharmaceutical industry from the concessionary SRO 567(I) 2006 for withdrawal of concessionary rate of customs duty notified in the budget. Now, the department will levy customs duty on import of these items as specified in the PCT, which are higher ranging between 5 and 25 percent.
These items are sodium dichromate (Pharmaceutical grade), other saturated acyclic mono-carboxylic acids and their anhydrides, halides, peroxides and peroxyacids; their helogenerated, sulphonated, nitrated or nitrosated derivates (Pharmaceutical grade), other hetrocyclic compounds with oxygen hetero-atoms only (Pharmaceutical grade), caseinates and other casein derivatives (Pharmaceutical grade), silicones (pharmaceutical grade), Carboxymethyl cellulose and its salts, hydorxy propyl methyl cellulose, sodium croscarmellose (Pharmaceutical grade).
Through another amendment, the Board has specified that both ''on Highway Dump Trucks of 320 HP and above'' and ''off Highway Dump Trucks of 320 HP and above'' would be imported on payment of 5 percent customs duty by the construction companies. The amendment has now specified these two types of dump trucks under one concessionary notification.
Previously, ''On Highway Dump Trucks of 320 HP and above'' and ''Off Highway Dump Trucks of 320 HP and above'' were not mentioned under one concessionary notification.