The Directorate on the directives of the Senate Standing Committee on Commerce and Textile conducted comprehensive audit of information technology products to ascertain the correctness of customs declaration made to Pakistan Customs at the time of import and to further probe the extent of underinvoicing/undervaluation in the imports of IT products.

For the purpose, the Directorate has sent notices to the nine companies involved in IT products imports under section 26 and 26-A of Customs Act 1969. However, no appropriate reply was received by the Directorate. Resultantly, summon notices were sent to the owners of the companies, asking to product import documents but the same also remained unattended.

Later, the Directorate contacted with OEMs and asked for submitting actual invoices in order to verify the veracity of the information provided by the companies to the customs.

Officials confirmed that the Directorate after scrutinizing actual invoices received from the OEM established that these companies had forged actual invoices and suppressed the value of imported IT products and evaded duty and taxes amounting to Rs. 649.54 million through under-invoicing and misdeclaration. Legal proceedings against these companies are in progress.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020