MULTAN: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has paid Rs23 billion customs duty drawbacks to exporters in 2020-21 whereas around Rs20 billion duty drawback was paid to 7,800 exporters under Prime Minister special relief package during 2019-20.
One of the key objectives behind the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) new vision, reforms, and policy is to increase FBRs autonomy by reducing the external influence to effectively ensure managing FBR’s performance.
According to the report of three years performance of the PTI government, the FBR’s vision is to incentivize businesses to become a part of the formal economy, thus adding larger sources of tax income to the national exchequer; simplify tax assessment rules for corporations and small businesses; integrate tax registration with associated processes to reduce the cost of paying taxes and improve audits by establishing Risk Engines and Smart Algorithms to identify potential taxpayers for audit.
The FBR’s vision is to publish names of non-compliant taxpayers and strongly pursue large tax evaders, and a crackdown on corrupt practices that promote tax evasion.
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has paid Rs. 23 billion customs duty drawbacks to the exporters in 2020-21 whereas around Rs. 20 billion duty drawback was paid to 7,800 exporters under Prime Minister special relief package during 2019-20. According to the report of three years performance of the PTI government released , in order to mitigate the impact of economic slowdown on exporters due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Prime Minister announced a special Relief Package.
In this regard, a hectic exercise was carried out in the Customs Wing of FBR. A total of Rs. 20 billion approximately was paid as Customs Duty Drawback from the Assignment Account Maintained at FBR (HQ)/AGPR, and this amount was directly credited online to the accounts of the exporters.
During this exercise, more than 434,000 claims were disposed of, and approximately 7,800 exporters benefited from this Relief Package. Moreover, Customs field formations also sanctioned/paid an amount of Rs. 14.204 billion. Accordingly, during FY 2019-20, a total No. of 747,873 claims was paid involving an amount of Rs. 34.044 billion. Whereas, during FY 2020-21 Rs. 23 billion were paid to the exporters as Duty Drawbacks.
The “Automated System” for transparent, efficient, and speedy payment of Customs Duty Drawback to the exporters was rolled out on 30.09.2020, aiming at fulfilling the vision of the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The automation ended human interaction in the issuance of Duty Drawback Claims. The guiding principle of the Automated System is FIFO (First-In First-Out), determined by the system automatically.
So far, an amount of Rs. 16 billion as of 30.06.2021 has been paid as Customs Duty Drawback to the Exporters through Automated System. In addition, Rs. 7 billion has also been paid as DDB under Old Payment System making a total payment of DDB during FY 2020-21 to Rs. 23 billion.
