Customs officers not abreast with Policy Provisions leading to loss in time, money and effort for the exporters.
Welcoming the participants at the Open House Meet with the Chief Commissioner Customs, Delhi region organized, yesterday, by the Federation of Indian Export Organisations ( FIEO ) Dr. R K Dhawan , Chairman FIEO ( Northern Region) highlighted the various problems being faced by the exporters which increased the transaction costs and made Indian exports un-competitive in the global market. He said that the exporters should be given a fair and just treatment by Customs in the difficult scenario which has arisen due to appreciating Rupee vis-à-vis US Dollars coupled with global slowdown. Dr. Dhawan said that most of the exporters' problems could be sorted out through regular training interventions for the customs officials as many of them dealing with export cargo were not abreast of the policy provisions and raised unjust and unfair objections leading to loss in time, money and effort for the exporters.
Mr. A C Buck , Chief Commissioner Customs said that annually there has been an increase of 29% in the number of shipping bills being received by the Delhi Air cargo and they were coping with the increased workload with the limited infrastructure which was existing in the past. He said that the Consolidation Project was on and the physical infrastructure for setting up centralized servers, software etc. was being built up and expected the pilot run to begin from June 2008 and the full system to begin function from the year end. Meanwhile he invited the exporters to take up their pending issues through FIEO once every quarter with the respective commissioners. He also advised the commissioners to review the pending cases automatically every month and to reduce pendency. He assured the exporters that all pending supplementary drawback claims would be cleared by the end of May.
Mr. Ajay Sahai , Director General FIEO drew the attention of the customs officials on the large number of pending drawback claims as also certain in-built policy provisions which were being flouted by the customs officials due to their ignorance.
It is really a sad state of affairs that the trade is accusing the officialdom of ignorance, when that used to be the privilege of the assessee.