The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has expressed inability to provide trade statistics of individual importers and exporters to both trade associations and government organisations due to absence of legal backing.
Sources told Business Recorder on Friday that the FBR had thoroughly examined the issue of providing trade data of individual importers and exporters to different persons, tax practitioners, interest groups, trade bodies and government departments.
The Board also consulted tax laws including Customs Act, 1969 and international trade conventions to clarify the provision of trade data of individuals to different organisations.
Under section 155H of Customs Act, 1969 the confidentiality of information has been guaranteed and any disclosure, publishing or dissemination of trade information of any person, barring few exceptions as provided in the law for official use, is not permissible.
In this connection, the Customs Act restricts that all trade information gathered by customs during clearance of goods shall be confidential and shall not be used except for statistical purposes by the department; comparison and evidence by customs officials against other imports and exports and production of data as an evidence before a legal forum or an organisation explicitly authorised by the federal government.
Any disclosure, publishing or dissemination, of trade information of any person without his explicit permission to any other person would be considered an offence under Customs Act.
Sources said that the best international practices as envisaged in the Revised Kyoto Convention, to which Pakistan is a signatory, also respect the confidentiality of data, and warrant that when the Customs supply information, they shall ensure that they do not divulge details of a private transactions or data of confidential nature pertaining to details of trade transactions to third parties unless such disclosure is required or authorised by legislation.
Keeping in view the legal and international obligations, FBR has regretted its inability to provide data to individual importers or exporters except in the following format: Information of imports/exports including description; H S Code; cumulative assessed value for the month and origin of the imported/exported goods. This data is available on the Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) website and may be utilised by the interested parties, sources said.
Comments
Comments are closed.