FBR bans import of fabricated sprinkle lorries

KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has banned the import of fabricated sprinkle or spraying lorries with immediate effect after detecting duty evasion worth billions of rupees in this head, said officials on Friday.
The officials said that the import of sprinkle or spraying lorries were allowed in the Import Policy Order 2009 with certain exemptions, which made the import of such vehicle at much lower rates. “However, some importers misused the facility by importing the vehicles and later converted it to dumping truck by detaching certain parts of sprinkle lorries,” said an official on the condition of anonymity.

Realising the fact of gross misuse of facility available in the Import Policy Order 2009, Pakistan Customs, the revenue collecting arm of the FBR, issued an order saying: “The facility is reportedly, being misused as instead of plying as spraying / sprinkle lorries, the water tanks and other spraying equipment is removed after import / clearance for sale in the open market and the unit is used as truck.”

The order also said that the misuse of the import facility and to facilitate the genuine importers of spraying / sprinkle lorries, certain features will only qualify for the facility under the Import Policy Order.

The features included engine / motor driven pump operated from inside the vehicle’s driver cabin; spray heads - fitted at front, mid or rear of the vehicle and all functions controlled from chassis cabin with operator control panel; and tank shell mounted on entire chassis frame length having capacity of 1,000 gallons or more and made up of high strength material.

The officials said that difference of one unit price between imported sprinkle lorries and the local dump truck is around Rs5 million. The import data of such vehicles revealed that around 10,389 sprinkle lorries were imported during 2009-10 to 2011-12, valuing around Rs9.257 billion. The staff of the Model Customs Collectorate (Appraisement), Karachi gave clearance to 10,637 units of sprinkle lorries during the period, which valued around Rs8.958 billion. The reset was cleared by the Port Qasim Collectorate.

The customs authorities already had information about such misuse, which was dealt by the FBR by issuing strict warning early this fiscal year to prevent cases of misdeclaration at the import stage to safeguard the revenue, said officials. Despite these warnings, the appraisement staff cleared import of another 459 lorries, amounting to Rs161 million during the July–September 2012 period.

The officials said that the quantum of duty evasion and defrauding the national exchequer is not available, at present, but it would be in billions of rupees.

A senior customs official said that despite having reports of misuse by the importers, the latest order is silent about taking any action against the culprits and about making recovery from them.

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