ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar announced to exempt customs duties on import of industrial raw material.
While presenting the Budget 2020/2021, the minister highlighted the key points of changes brought to Customs Act, 1990 through Finance Bill, 2020.
He said that the government had initiated customs tariff rationalization during the last year and allowed exemptions from customs duties on 1600 tariff lines of raw material.
In order to reduce cost of production it is suggested that all raw material should be exempted from customs duty from next fiscal year.
These exemptions has been proposed for import of raw material for manufacturing of chemicals, leather, textile, rubber, fertilizers etc.
These tariff lines include 20,000 items which are around 20 percent of the total imports.
Furthermore, he said that customs duty has been reduced on 200 tariff lines on import of raw material and secondary products which, included bleaching, rubber and raw material for home consumption.
Hammad Azhar on the floor of the National Assembly said that regulatory duty has been reduced to 6 percent from existing 12.5 percent on import of hot rolled coils for encouraging domestic engineering sector.
He said that the regulatory duty has been reduced on various products in order to discourage smuggling. The minister said that in the past regulatory duty was imposed which resulted in reduction of import of such goods. However, it is observed that some products were imported by Afghanistan and then entered into Pakistani markets.
Therefore, it is suggested the reduction of regulatory duty on import of cloths, sanitary ware, electrodes, blankets, pad locks etc.
The government has also abolished duty and taxes on import of diagnostic kits for coronavirus and cancer to provide relief to the masses. Further, duty and taxes have also been abolished on import of special food supplements and dietetic food.
