‘Reconciliation statement’ by exporters: EFS places safeguard of submission: minister

ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Railways and Finance & Revenue Bilal Azhar Kayani has said that the Export Facilitation Scheme (EFS) has placed a safeguard of submission of “reconciliation statement” by the exporters to check abuse of the scheme.

According to a tweet of Kayani on Thursday, a six-monthly reconciliation statement will help safeguard the EFS scheme from abuse.

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has issued the final notification to revise the EFS on Thursday.

Explaining the FBR’s SRO 528(I)/2026, the minister stated that the government has increased the utilization period under the EFS from nine months to 18 months. This essentially means that exporters can now avail zero duty and import stage taxes for imported inputs provided that they are used within 18 months (previously this period was nine months).

READ MORE: FBR further tightens EFS for all categories

The longer utilisation period will help reduce the cost for our exporters and will particularly help our SME exporters.

An additional extension for six months, beyond the 18 month utilisation period, will be considered by a Committee on a case-by-case basis. A six-monthly reconciliation statement will help safeguard the EFS scheme from abuse.

The committee studied and considered historical EFS data and utilisation period benchmarks of regional peers before arriving at its unanimous recommendations.

Before this policy change, there were a total of 7,932 Goods Declarations (GDs) of EFS users’ input goods, which had exceeded the allowed 9-month period. After the policy change to the 18 month utilisation period, all of these GDs are now again eligible for exports under EFS.

Bilal Azhar Kayani further said that two additional improvements have also been made that is Automatic replenishment of the amount of security deposit to the extent of the amount of goods consumed and exported, which will save exporters time and second is EFS users have been given the right of appeal with the Chief Collector against the orders of regulatory collector, he added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026