ISLAMABAD: The government has changed the duty structure on import of over 888 items besides imposing 5 percent sales tax on products, plants and machinery.
As per budget documents, the government has imposed 1pc customs duty on import of 500 items which likely to generate more than Rs500 million revenue.
Prominent items slapped with duty include live animals including bulls, cows, oxen, sheep and goats. The duty will also raise the cost of imported beans, peas and other vegetables.
The duty on import of 356 items was lowered from 30pc to 25pc. This reduction in lowering duties will cost the exchequer an amount of Rs1.5bn.
The lowering of duty will be on yoghurt, butter, dairy spread, cheese, curd, and most of the fresh fruits — apple, mangoes, guavas, pineapples, kinno, pears etc.
On 20 items the rate of duty increased to 10pc from 5pc; the rate of duty was raised to 15pc from 10pc on three items, reduce the rate of customs duty to 10pc from 20pc on six items and increased the duty rate to 15pc from 5pc on import of three items.
According to details, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) imposed 5pc sales tax on import and local supply of several items. Earlier, these items were exempted from the sales tax. These items were placed in a new scheduled eight introduced in the budget as part of the sales tax act 1990.
However, the 5pc sales tax will only be applicable on import of raw cotton and ginned cotton. The same will be exempted on its local supply.
The levy will be applicable on local supply and import of soya bean meal, oil cake, and other solid residues, whether or not ground or in the form of pellets, directly reduce iron and oilseed mean for sowing; plant and machinery not manufactured locally and having no compatible local substitutes.
The import of machinery will be subject to conditions already notified through the Finance Bill 2014. There will be no conditions on import of machinery on reduced rate of 5pc sales tax include machinery and equipment for development of grain handling and storage facilities; coal chain machinery and equipment.
The import of equipments by call centres, business processing outsourcing facility will have to be duly approved by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority for import of 5pc sales tax duty. These items include — UPS, inverter/converters; fax machines, photo copies, IP phone, telephone sets/head sets, dialers, generator, cat 5/cat 6/power cable, PAPX Switch, multimedia projectors, video conferencing equipment, CCTV, Plasma TV, PUD’s, dedicated telephone exchange system for call centres, parts, voice cards, digital call recorders and VAST terminals.
The concession of 5pc sales tax will be conditional on proprietary formworks system for building/structures of a height of 100 ft and above and its various items/components. The lower sales tax will also be available on complete plants for relocated industries.
