Customs duty of disposable gas revised

The Directorate General, Customs Valuation (DGCV) on Wednesday revised the customs duty of disposable gas under section 225-A of the Customs Act, 1969 According to the valuation rulings, the Directorate General had earlier circulated reference customs values of disposable gas/cigarette lighters in mid of November last year.
However, some importers approached the Directorate and requested to issue valuation ruling for uniform applicability. Therefore, the DGCV has initiated an exercise for determination of customs value for the subject goods. The meeting in this regard was called with stakeholders on January 10, 2017 and it had also been requested to them to furnish relevant documents in order to assist the department for determining the exact customs value of the said imported item.
However no stakeholder turned up for the meeting. Some applications were received for downward revision of the reference values but without any corroborating evidence/documents. Later, all the information gathered from different methods was evaluated and analysed that enabled the DGCV to determine the customs values of disposable gas/cigarette lighters under section 25 (9) of the Customs Act, 1969.
The disposable gas/cigarette lighters shall now be assessed to duty/taxes at the following customs values. The disposable gas origin from China will be assessed at US$0.11 per piece, Europe, USA, Canada and Japan at US$0.16 per piece and other origins at US$0.12 per piece.
The DGCV has also directed the concerned collectors to ensure the values given in this valuation ruling for the given description of goods were applied by the concerned staff without fail. Any anomaly observed may be brought to the notice of this Directorate General immediately. Customs values determined in the ruling are for the description and specification as mentioned in valuation ruling values are made accessible to the assessing officers. The assessment shall be finalised on the basis of correct classification after fulfilling requisite formalities related to importability or any other certification required thereon. In addition to this, it is further necessary to verify that there is no misdeclaration of any sort or violation of Import Policy Order or Section 15 of the Customs Act, 1969 or any other law in vogue therein.