Customs duty of Rs 867 cr collected in Punjab in FY14

The customs duties collection by the Commissionerate of Amritsar in the current financial year aggregated Rs 867.86 crore after granting duty drawback of Rs 290 crore on exports. Of these, Inland Container Depots (ICDs) in Ludhiana contributed Rs 757.80 crore, whereas ICP Attari contributed Rs 119.32 crore, according to Sunil Sawhney, Customs Commissioner in Amritsar. The commissionerate has jurisdiction over Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Union Territory of Chandigarh.

Sawhney said the dry ports at Ludhiana, Dappar and Jalandhar and ICP Attari and rail cargo in Amritsar, from where cross-border trade between India and Pakistan takes place, are the major customs revenue stations in Punjab. The cross-border trade between India and China, which is essentially barter trade, takes place from Shipki La in Himachal Pradesh.

The major items of import are Heavy Melting Scrap (HMS), cement, fibres and yarns, gypsum, rock salt, chemicals, etc. The HMS and cement constitute bulk of the revenue collections in this commissionerate.

Sawhney further said a number of trade facilitation measures for promoting the import and export trade at the various Land Customs Stations have been taken recently, including constituting the Permanent Trade Facilitation Standing Committee, to resolve the procedural bottlenecks for cutting down the transaction costs of importers and exporters.

Electronic Data Interface (EDI) has been commissioned at ICP Attari, to do away with the manual processing of the customs formalities which will reduce the dwell time of cargo. The EDI has been started for exports and shall be introduced for imports by May-end. On account of these trade facilitation measures, the revenue collections in January to March this year have been higher by about nine per cent over the revenue collections in January to March, 2013, as against the Revised Estimate of six per cent in the last quarter of the financial year.