Under a thana (police station), no crime can take place without the knowledge or connivance of at-least one officer – FM at the Chief Commissioner's conference.
Inaugurating the two-day conference of Chief Commissioners and Directors General of Customs & Central Excise Department, the Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, expressed his unhappiness over the consistent short-fall in Central Excise Revenue. He refused to agree with the view that there is something wrong in the target fixation. He also refused to agree that Commissioners and Chief Commissioners are over-worked. He wanted them to gear-up and identify evasion. Apart from misuse of the cenvat credit facility, he wanted officers to ensure that clandestine removal is arrested.
The meeting started with a performance report by the Chairman of the CBEC Mr. P. C. Jha. Several presentations were made at the meeting by DGs and other senior officers on
(1) Action taken report on last year's recommendations.
(2) Performance appraisal.
(3) Automation initiatives in CBEC.
(4) Issues related to SEZ.
(5) Integrity Management in CBEC.
(6) Service Tax
(7) Legal & judicial matters.
(8) Current Commercial and Smuggling Frauds
There was a general consensus that DGCEI and DRI should be strengthened, especially as they had been responsible for huge recovery of duties. The Finance Minister was of the opinion that it was the field formations which have to be strengthened as DRI and DGCEI had limited roles. He, however, appreciated the fact that revenue collections improved after the DGCEI or DRI booked cases. He specifically mentioned the Rajkot Tiles case where evasion had been going on unchecked for years and after the DGCEI booked the case, there was a spurt in revenue. Thus, the cases registered by these agencies are only samples and field formations should identify similar cases and recover revenue. In this context, the DG (DRI) made a fervent appeal to the field that the DRI should be seen as a support system and not as an adversary. He requested the Chief Commissioners to provide manpower to the Directorates.
The DG (Systems) said that ACES – Automation in Central Excise & Service Tax with a powerful data warehouse will be a reality soon.
SEZs – What is the role of Customs? This was an interesting topic discussed in the meeting. At present, only Deputy Commissioners of Customs are posted in the SEZs. Who will adjudicate cases beyond the powers of the DCs? Will the jurisdictional Customs & Central Excise officers adjudicate cases relating to unauthorised operations in the SEZs? These were some of the questions raised in the conference. However, the question whether clearances to SEZ are liable for export duty was not a topic for discussion. May be the revenue officers are convinced that duty is liable and there is no doubt on that.
Though the conference had not taken any decisions as such, many participants felt that the conference was very useful as it had thrown up a lot of issues on which the Board should now take decisions.
Delivering the valedictory address, the Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Palanimanickam, said that these conferences were held with the same agenda year after year. He suggested that the agenda should be finalized in consultation with the field formations. He emphasized the importance of training and said that training should not be considered as a dumping ground.
See you next year with the same agenda and same issues.