Declared value of imported goods: KCCI urges action against customs officials for wrong assessment

Senior Vice President of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) Iftikhar Ahmed Sheikh has urged Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Abdullah Yousuf to take action against those officials, who arbitrarily enhance the declared value of imported goods without any basis.
In a letter to the FBR Chairman, he claimed that higher and unjust assessment were made without any reference or evidence, thus leaving the importers/ traders with the only option to either accept arbitrarily assessed value or go for review.
In the process, he said the importers/ traders, besides undergoing mental torture, had to pay demurrage/ detention charges, failing which they had to face consequences for not honouring the commitments with their customers.
Iftikhar Sheikh noted that mostly assessing office as well as the principal appraisers did the enhancement in declared value, and added when they challenged these enhanced values were mostly rejected by the assistant/ deputy collector. The KCCI Senior Vice President further noted that in most cases the clearance of consignments were delayed unnecessary by the customs officials, demanding documents even after the delay of 24 hours of filing of goods declaration (GD), which negated the claim speedy clearance.
He said that the system of Care was introduced to reduce the clearance time vis-à-vis the manual system, but unfortunately it had gone vice versa. The goods declaration filed in the Care on an average took days instead of hours as promised to release the consignment as soon as possible, he said, and attributed the delay to re-routing of more than 85 percent of cargo through examiners and appraisers which, in fact, was worse than the manual system.
He further said neither the importers nor the customs agents had any access to put forward their case in case of any dispute at the initial level of assessment. Iftikhar Sheikh proposed that the goods, after payment of duty, be speedily released and all possible bottlenecks and shortcomings be addressed and removed.
He further pointed out that due to wrong arbitrary and unjustified assessments at the initial or first stage, the importers and customs agents had to frequently visit the model collectorate to see the deputy collectors or others higher officials to apprise them of their grievances, but it was impossible for them to seek an appointment or meet these officials unless one had wait for hours outside their offices.
Iftikhar Sheikh suggested that the concerned officials be advised to see the visitors, ie importers without keeping them in inordinate waiting for long hours or the number of deputy collectors might be increased so that this problem was resolved.
Another problem which he highlighted was non-availability of front desk staff, especially those who were entrusted the task of carrying out the scanning of documents.
He further noted that at present there was no system available for the importers to log-in and see the status/ progress being made in respect of clearance of their consignments except through a window which said that clearance was "under process". It did not reflect as to what process was going on as to whether the same was under "assessment stage" or "examination stage" or under any other stage such as show cause notice etc.
He said it was strange that once the duty was paid in advance and the GD was filed, but the importer had to wait until the clearance signal was received in the system, which might take hours and weeks, depending upon the desire and wish of the assessing officer.
He suggested that the importers must be given a right to see as to what progress was being made by the department and there must be a system of update after every eight to 12 hours and such update must specifically be disclose as to what was the status of the GD and why the same was stuck up with which department so that the importer could to pursue the same.
Iftikhar Sheikh noted that due to these problems, cost of doing business had increased to manifold in the shape of demurrages charges as well as container rent to the shipping lines as after introduction of Care, the port and terminal operators as well as shipping lines had reduced the free period from seven to five days, which also included holidays and unfortunately none of the departments/ banks worked for 24 hours.