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Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs chairman Sanjay Kumar Agarwal on Thursday said India is actively pursuing negotiation for signing of mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) with customs authorities of about 30 countries. Mutual recognition agreements help ease overseas trade by avoiding dual certifications. It thus reduces compliance cost, simplifying compliance requirements by adhering to only one regulation and enhancing trade opportunities. India is proactively engaging with its trading partners to broaden and deepen the Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) program. India has successfully signed MRAs with several key trading partners including the US, South Korea, UAE, Taiwan, Australia and Malaysia, he said. "Negotiations are ongoing with over 30 countries with promising progress and discussions with Japan and South Africa," he said while addressing the Global Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) Conference here. The AEO programme enables the Customs administration to ...
The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on the customs department's plea seeking a review of its 2021 judgement that had held that officers of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence have no authority to seek recovery of duties on goods already cleared for import by the customs. In a hearing spanning over four days, a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices JV Pardiwala and Manoj Misra heard submissions from Additional Solicitor General (ASG) N Venkataraman, appearing for the customs department, and a battery of lawyers led by senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who represented private companies in the case. Usually, the review pleas against judgements are considered in chambers by the judges and no oral submissions are allowed.However, the review plea of the customs department was heard in an open court. ASG Venkataraman vehemently sought setting aside of the 2021 judgement, saying the officials of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) are also ...
The complex language used in the notifications of the CBIC regarding customs duties needs simplification to help industry in understanding those orders as they carry crucial details, economic think tank GTRI said on Thursday. The Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) said for this the CBIC (Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs) must use services of communication experts for help in drafting easy to understand notifications containing necessary details. This will help over a lakh firms importing merchandise exceeding USD 660 billion in 2023 and it will also add to the ease of doing business with zero cost to the government and immense benefit of clarity to the Indian industry, it said. "Notifying import duties is a critical mandate of CBIC. Firms pay import duties as notified by CBIC, but firms cannot do it on their own as the CBIC notifications use complex language and mostly refer to back notifications unintentionally hiding complete details needed to know the duty or impo
Industry body Assocham has sought reduction in basic customs duty and correction of inverted duty structure on critical raw materials for the aluminium industry as high import duties is a huge disadvantage for the sector heavily dependent on imported raw materials. In its pre-Budget memorandum 2023-34, Assocham said high import duty on raw materials results in Indian finished goods getting costlier and uncompetitive in international markets, rendering negative protection against cheaper imports of finished products, and discourages domestic value addition within the country. "The average production cost of Indian aluminium producers is amongst highest in the world, majorly due to high incidence of unrebated Central & State taxes and duties on inputs/ raw materials accounting for 18-20 per cent of aluminium production costs," it said. In a bid to improve the cost structure of the Indian aluminium industry and enhance competitiveness, the basic customs duty on critical raw ...
The customs department has issued controlled delivery regulations authorising officers to track suspicious consignments of items, including gold, precious stones, drugs and cigarettes. The move, an official said, is aimed at checking smuggling and to trace the real culprit. As per the Controlled Delivery (Customs) Regulations, 2022, a customs officer at the ports can earmark both export and import consignments for controlled delivery on "reasonable belief" that it is "suspect". The list of items under the regulation are narcotic drug and psychotropic substances; gold, silver in all forms, precious and semi-precious stones, liquor; currency; cigarettes, tobacco; wildlife products and antiques. As per the regulations, the customs officer can, if needed, install tracking devices to monitor the movement of suspect consignment. According to a gold industry expert, this regulation can be applied to any movement by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence or other agencies like ED, which