Payment of rebates, refunds: FBR officials hold out assurances to exporters

Top officials of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) have assured exporters regarding removing bottlenecks and expediting payments of customs rebates and sales tax refunds, Chairman Pakistan Textile Exporters Association Rana Arif Tauseef said on Saturday.
Briefing reporters after a meeting with FBR Chairman Mumtaz Haider Rizvi, Rana Tauseef said that a delegation, comprising has assured to remove unnecessary bottlenecks and to expedite payments of custom rebate and sales tax refunds to exporters, said Rana Arif Tauseef, Chairman Pakistan Textile Exporters Association here today briefing the newsmen after his meeting with FBR Chairman.
Elaborating, he said that a delegation comprising of Khwaja Muhammad Amjad of the hosiery Sector, Nadeem Ashfaq Puri (embroidery), Muhammad Asghar, Amir Nisar, Jibran Ahmad, Salahudin Tahir, Muhammad Iqbal and Farhat Rashid Bhatti (all from power loom sector) met with the FBR chairman. He said that members of the delegation informed the FBR chief about the problems they were facing in the refund system. He was also informed that a huge amount of exporters had also been blocked in various refund regimes, creating liquidity problems for them.
He said the chairman FBR was informed that millions of rupees of textile exporters were stuck up in duty drawback and federal excise duty refund regimes. They complained that over the past three years, the Faisalabad custom collectorate had not sanctioned any duty drawback. The FBR chairman, he said, was also informed that the serious liquidity crunch faced by exporters and manufacturers had caused closures of several industrial units.
Chairman FBR was quoting as saying that he had already allowed the payment of federal excise duty and assured that the refund system would be accelerated. He directed the chief commissioner, north zone, to visit Faisalabad and make efforts for speedy processing of refund claims.
Rana Arif Tauseef said that he had proposed to the FBR chairman to impose withholding tax at a uniform ratio of 1 percent, instead of different slabs between 1 and 3.5 percent. He said that he had also requested the FBR chairman to consider various tax exemptions. He said that he had also called for exempting value-added chain from CNIC and NTN registration under SRO 191.
The delegation also requested for an exemption of 5% sales tax on purchases of weaving, sizing, embroidery, hosiery and home textile sectors from unregistered persons, because of their being conversion sectors only. HE reminded that unregistered persons were already paying 16 percent sales tax. Mumtaz Haider Rizvi candidly responded to all recommendations and acknowledged the positive role played by textile exporters in the country's progress. He assured the delegation that the FBR would look into all proposals. The PTEA Chairman said that the FBR chief had assured the delegates to address their tax problems.