LAHORE: Collector Customs Lahore Saira Agha has assured All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) of removing the glitches in Export Finance Scheme (EFS) at the earliest to make it user friendly to enhance trading activities and improve the inflows of foreign exchange in the country.
She was chairing a workshop jointly organised by the APTMA and Collectorate of Customs at the North Zone office of the Association on Tuesday. Collector Customs Sambarial Nayar Shafiq and Additional Collector Farah Farooq also accompanied her on the occasion.
Chairman APTMA North Zone Hamid Zaman, Senior Vice Chairman Kamran Arshad and Secretary General Raza Baqir welcomed the team. Technical staff from member mills was also present to attend the workshop.
Collector Customs Lahore said all steps were being taken to promote the EFS, adding the prime objective of the Scheme was to streamline the exports in order to earn precious foreign exchange for the country.
According to her, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) would ensure all measures to make the EFS user friendly for the exporters’ community.
“The queries raised in today’s workshop would help in shooting out the discrepancies in the scheme,” she maintained.
She said the Board had also introduced barter scheme to facilitate exporters. Under the scheme, she said, the exporters would require neither letter of credit nor banking channel to export their shipments. The exporters would come out of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) regime, she added.
Earlier, Additional Collector Farah Farooq made a detailed presentation on the scheme, highlighting the accomplishments made by the department so far. She also pointed out that the department had set up help desks to facilitate exporters under the EFS.
Speaking on the occasion, Senior Vice Chairman APTMA Kamran Arshad said the EFS period was not yet reflected in the system, which required attention of the department without delay. He said the department should also consider discontinuing manual submissions and approvals to mitigate delays due to parallel systems of electronic and manual submissions.
He also proposed that the system should adjust devaluation fluctuations in case it is more than five percent. He also highlighted the valuation issues regarding local sale of permissible waste and stressed on amicable settlement to relieve exporters once and for all. He also demanded an expeditious implementation of change request forms to minimise difficulties for exporters and proposed monthly meetings between the two sides to resolve procedural lapses in the scheme.
Chairman North Zone Hid Zaman thanked the visiting Customs high-ups and proposed another workshop right after Eid holidays to overcome operational issues in the scheme, as highlighted by the technical staff of member mills.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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