ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue has issued draft Rules for new Export Facilitation Scheme 2021 and called for comments from industry, exporters and other stakeholders, said a press release.

New Export Facilitation Scheme has been approved by the federal government and passed by Parliament under Finance Act 2021. This scheme will be implemented from 14th August 2021 and will run parallel with existing schemes like Manufacturing Bond, DTRE and Export Oriented Schemes for two years.

The existing old schemes shall be phased out in next two years and will be fully replaced by Export Facilitation Scheme-2021. Draft Rules can be accessed at official website of the FBR.

The salient features of the new EFS-2021 includes; minimum documentation and encourages new entrants and SMEs. This scheme will be completely automated under WeBOC and PSW. The focus of the scheme is on post clearance compliance checks and audits. Users of this scheme include Exporters (Manufacturers cum Exporters, Commercial Exporters, Indirect Exporters), Common Export Houses, Vendors and International Toll Manufacturers.

Users of this scheme shall be subject to authorization of inputs by the Collector of Customs and Director General Input Output Organization (IOCO). Inputs include all goods (imported or procured local) for manufacture of goods to be exported. These include raw materials, spare parts, components, equipment, plant and machinery.

No duty and taxes shall be levied on inputs imported by the authorised users and local supplies of inputs to the authorised users shall be zero-rated. Through this new scheme concept of Common Export House to import raw material duty and tax free for subsequent sale to the authorized users especially SMEs has been introduced.

This scheme also introduces concept of International Toll manufacturing. Under this new scheme, utilization period has been enhanced from two years to five years depending on the profile/category of exporters.

It is expected that Export Facilitation Scheme 2021 shall reduce cost of doing business and cost of tax compliance, improve ease of doing business, reduce liquidity problems of exporters by eliminating sales tax refunds and duty drawback for the users of scheme and shall attract more users and shall ultimately promote exports.-PR

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021