Self Assessment in Customs - CBEC Chairman Allays Apprehensions
IN a letter addressed to the Bombay Customs House Agents' Association, the Chairman, CBEC clarified:-
++ The purpose of the recent amendments in the Customs Act 1962 was to provide a legal and operational framework for significant enhancement in the facilitation performance of Customs by allowing the importers and exporters to do self-assessment of their import/export goods, and by reducing pre-clearance checks based on Risk Parameters. It was also to cast responsibility for correct assessment on the importers/exporters.
++ The position with regard to implementation of Self Assessment scheme is that the Bills of Entry/Shipping Bills will be self-assessed by the importer/exporter. The ‘Clean Bills of Entry', as I would like to call the ones which would not be hit by the Risk Management System (RMS), would be cleared without any further reassessment by Group Appraisers, and the goods would be cleared after payment of duty on the basis of normal examination norms, as decided by RMS.
++ Only those Bills of Entry, which are hit by any of the parameters in RMS that will be marked to the Group Appraisers for scrutiny. On scrutiny, if the self-assessment done by the importer is found to be correct, no further reassessment would be needed and the Bill of Entry would proceed with its onward journey. If however, the scrutiny reveals the need for reassessment that will be done after following the due process of law.
++ Thus, the scheme of ‘Self Assessment' not only makes optimum use of EDI in Customs assessment, it also provides the Department an opportunity to extend greater facilitation to the compliant importers and exporters by relying upon self assessment and not resorting to reassessment. Keeping this in mind, the CBEC is currently in the process of enhancing the present level of facilitation by fine-tuning its RMS.
++ It has been reported that the level of facilitation on an average in the past year in Air, Sea and ICD has been at 60%, 50% and 40% respectively. After detailed study of the situation, the Board has taken a conscious decision to get the interdiction in RMS controlled.
++ It has been decided to take a slew of measures through which the Risk Managers, both at national and local level will fine tune the RMS, reduce the interdictions and ensure selection of consignments for scrutiny in a better focussed manner. We would like to achieve the facilitation target of 80% for Air Cargo, 70% for Sea Ports and 60% of ICDs in the next six months.
The Chairman added that he would like to have a pro-active role from the Trade in general and the Custom House Agents and freight forwarders in particular.
He says, “From my experience of past thirty seven years in this service, I can tell you on a rough estimate, only about three to four percent of the Trade are the delinquent ones, who resort to Customs commercial frauds. But the dent that they make on exchequer is huge. For a country like ours, we still need customs revenue for our several developmental works. And we need to punish those who break the law. Therefore, the Trade in general and you, the Custom House Agents and freight forwarders in particular, must come upfront and help the customs authorities in identifying the delinquent ones. It will be in your own interest. Much as though we in the administration try to bring reforms through liberalisation and simplification of procedure, instances of detection of big fraud put pressure on us for being more restrictive with more control. It would therefore be in your interest to help us make the scheme of ‘Self Assessment' a grand success, by isolating the delinquents amongst the Trade”.