DHAKA: Bangladesh Government authorities have decided to sign customs deals with many countries of the world to check duty elusion, done mainly by means of smuggling in goods and invoice tampering, official sources said here the other day.
The under-and over-invoicing tricks are also allegedly applied in money laundering-the smuggling out of funds, euphemistically called ‘capital flight’.
For an effective control of the financial offences, Bangladesh would join the global trade partners with separate bilateral trade agreements.
China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the USA, Indonesia, the Philippines and the European Union (EU) countries have been selected for signing the customs deals.
The decision on the issue was finalised in an inter-ministerial meeting Thursday at the National Board of Revenue (NBR) headquarters.
Currently, Bangladesh has such accords with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries and Turkey.
A senior customs official said negotiations with Mexico, Qatar, Iran and Sri Lanka are already on to sign similar deals.
He said although the SAARC agreement is in place but bilateral agreements with the countries are needed to resolve bilateral issues bilaterally.
“We have also shared work plan with India to consider the issue,” he said.
The customs wing of the NBR recently finalised a draft of the deal styled ‘Cooperation and Mutual Administrative Assistance in Customs Matters’. The draft has been reviewed in the inter-ministerial meeting.
Apart from NBR officials, the meeting was attended by officials of the ministries of Finance, Foreign, Commerce, Shipping, and Home and the Bangladesh Bank.
The draft of the agreement would be sent to the customs of the selected countries through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their consideration, he added.
If those countries agreed to join hands together, then the customs wings would start formal negotiation with them, he said.
“The countries will be selected on the basis of volume of bilateral trade with Bangladesh,” he added.
According to the draft agreement, contracting countries and regions will exchange information with one another. The countries will also extend technical and administrative cooperation to check duty evasion through external trade.
The countries would share information relating to import-export of goods, suspects in smuggling, under-and over-invoicing and other trade-related matters.