The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has disposed of over 80 percent of the financial securities including bank guarantees, insurance guarantees, post-dated cheques and indemnity bonds submitted by business community during last many years.
Sources told Business Recorder on Wednesday the legislative changes made in Customs Act, 1969 in the budget helped dispose of pending financial securities. An amnesty scheme for condonation of delays in submission of installation, consumption certificates, etc, was announced. The general amnesty was allowed for time limit specified in various notifications for the submission of consumption, installation and installation-cum-production certificates. Where concessionary rate under SROs has already been paid on raw materials, intermediary products or consumer goods, collateral guarantees/bonds have been released without consumption/installation certificates.
Sources said most of the collectorates have managed to clear the pending bank guarantees. Over 80 percent of the total pending bank guarantees have been cleared except Karachi where there is slight pendnecy.
According to an estimate, there are pending bank guarantees involving billions of rupees despite the fact that the condition of submitting 'installation customs certificate" has been waived. In certain cases there are expired bank guarantees, which are still pending at the level of collectorates, sources said.
Importers had submitted securities and guarantees against the provisional release of goods without payment of duties and taxes. In other cases, guarantees were demanded on non-production of installation or consumption certificates under various FBR notifications.
Major portion of old cases related to the financial guarantees submitted by the exploration and petroleum, textile and OEM sectors, captive power units, water and power projects, pharmaceuticals companies, public sector organisations.
Priority for disposal was assigned to those cases where the requisite legal formalities had been fulfilled. Simultaneously in cases where requisite legal formalities were not fulfilled, requests were made to concerned importers for providing the required documents through individual notices as well as advertisements. Moreover, the concerned trade bodies and associations were also requested to advice members to get their pending securities released after fulfilling the requisite formalities, sources added.
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