KARACHI: Regional Tax Office Karachi’s Chief Commissioner Inland Revenue Hafiz Muhammad Andhar said that Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) will be directly connected with Pakistan Hosiery Manufactures and Exporters Association (PHMEA) so that exporters will be able to work smoothly, during a meeting at PHMEA House on Wednesday.
The exporters can submit manuals after connection of the link, he added “There is shortage of human resource in RTO due to which it takes comparatively longer time for us to verify the cases of exporters, however the refunds are being issued within a week after verification of the documents,” he added. He said that they were going to maintain a separate list of regular exporters and manufactures so that they could get refunds on time.
He agreed upon a request of exporters to constitute a joint team of PHMEA and RTO to address the matters of traders. He also said that the black sheep among the exporters were creating hurdles in smooth business by the loyal traders. While talking to Customs Today, he said that RTO had collected some 16 percent more revenue during July to December of current Fiscal Year as against the same period of FY13-14. Commissioner RTO Zone 1, Ashfaq Tonio on this occasion said, “Whenever any system was introduced for the betterment of exporters, it was deliberately misused.” He said when government introduced star system, many fraud cases occurred unfortunately. He said that the government was responsible to refund the amount in case it receives from traders but how the traders were expecting refunds when government has not received any amount from them, he questioned.
“If exports come down by 5 to 10 percent then how it is possible that refunds register 35 percent growth. It means that the refunds were apparently received through flying invoices,” he added. Chairman Pakistan Apparel Forum, Javaid Bilwani, Muhammad Babar Khan, Saleem Parikh, Muzamil Hussain, Kamran Chandna, and Arshad Shehzad also put forward their recommendations on the occasion.
