KARACHI: The Directorate General of Customs Valuation has revised the customs value potato chips through Valuation Ruling No 1115/2017 under Section 25A of the Customs Act, 1969.
According to the details, Directorate General had earlier conducted an audit of the clearance values and during the course of perusal of import clearance data, it was observed that imported chips were being assessed at different and lower values vis-à-vis international trading prices and local market selling prices.
Therefore, as an immediate corrective measure the clearance Collectorates was sensitized and this Directorate General issued a database values vide VDB letter 127 dated 16-12-2017 as an additional risk assessment tool, while according clearance to imported Chips. Thereafter, as per the policy in vogue, valuation database reference values are required to be converted into valuation ruling. In this context, the Directorate General, valuation initiated an exercise for determination of assessable customs values of imported Chips under section 25-A of Customs Act, 1969.
Meetings for determination of customs values of chips were held with stakeholders held on 27-02-2017 & 10-03-2017 but none of importers appeared on the said dates of hearings.
Valuation methods provided in Section 25 of the Customs Act, 1969 were duly followed and applied sequentially to address the valuation issue at hand. Transaction value method provided in Sub-Section (1) of Section 25 was found inapplicable because the requisite information under the law was not available to arrive at the correct transaction value as the goods were found to be highly under invoiced when compared to international trading prices and also in terms of local selling prices. Furthermore, no invoices found from inside import-containers are reported by clearance Collectorates. Identical / similar goods value method provided in Sub-Sections (5) & (6) of Section 25 ibid were examined for applicability to determine Customs value of subject goods, this data provided some references, however, it was found that the same cannot be solely relied upon due to the absence of absolute demonstrable evidence of laities, and quantities of commercial level etc.,
