The country’s customs system will achieve international standard by 2021, according to the National Board of Revenue (NBR).
Speaking as the chief guest of a workshop on post clearance audit in the port city, Muhammad Aminur Rahman, NBR member, said they are now working to ease doing business and ensure an investment-friendly environment.
“In compliance with the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) signed in 2016, we are going to replace physical inspections with non-intrusive ones. All customs stations of the country are going to be equipped with container scanners. Additionally, the country’s airports are going to be equipped with modern baggage scanners. We are going to distribute Raman Spectrometres (machine to identify contents of imported goods) to all stations within a very short time,” said the NBR member.
“There are three categories in the TFA and the PCA falls into the third category. Without the assistance from the development partners, it is not possible to implement the third category of the TFA. We are making amendments to the laws and bringing about the organisational change required for the TFA which is a means to measure the rate of compliance,” said he, adding that the country saw its first automation in the customs department through the Asycuda software.
A total of 100 Assistant Revenue Officers (ARO) received the three-day training organised by the NBR at the Customs, Excise and VAT Training Academy.
With Shafiul Islam, director general of the academy in the chair, Md Nasir Uddin, team leader of USAID TFA and Md Al Said, PCA and AEO specialist of USAID, also spoke during the session among others.
