PESHAWAR: The customs officials will approve the import of vehicles only after the issuance of complete Form-E for certification of goods from commercial banks about the detail of the goods.
The official of Customs House Peshawar informed Customs Today about the recent development on the directives of the State Bank Pakistan to commercial banks’ branches to show complete details of goods to the custom officials for approval of ‘exports’ on Saturday at Peshawar.
He said it will be required to declare the exports to the customs/postal authorities in Form-E which must be certified by the authorized dealers (banks) in order to avoid trouble-doing trade.
In this regard, the exporters are required to write full details of goods being exported and quality as identifiable with the market report, he added.
The Manager National Bank of Pakistan told this scribe that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has expressed concern over the observation that the banks, who were certifying the incomplete Form-E without requiring the exporter to declare full description of goods, caused loss to the national exchequer.
Bank sources added that in order to ensure full disclosure of information by the exporter on Form-E, the central bank decided that banks should not certify Form-E where full description of item being exported was not clearly mentioned or a generic description was given instead of full details.
The central bank further said that it is a responsibility of a bank to compare the bills/or documents with the export form upon receipt of export documents and satisfy themselves that they conform in all respects to the declaration made on the Form-E.
“However it has been observed that ADs [banks] do not exercise care while checking the shipping documents and consistency of the description of goods as well as H S Code commodity classification mentioned on goods declaration with that of Form -E”.
The central bank directed the banks to ensure full description and in case there is disagreement in H S Code or description of goods declared to customs and to the bank on Form E, the bank shall require the exporter to give proper justification for the variation.
The SBP also observed that exporters resort to declaring the description of goods that are general in nature or represent the generic name of good instead of declaring full details and quality/varieties/sub categories of goods being exported.
The official Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industries talked about the matter in the sense that major shifts needed to implement the orders as the Torkham and Chaman crossings already have issues of less numbers of commercial banks and this requirement will further trouble exporters.
The second difficulty which the exporters face will be lack of training and education on the half of them to do transaction through Form-E as they have used traditional methods for transfers of money from ages.
This trend will take time and certain workshops and training will be required to educate exporters, he added.
