Home ›› 10 Dec 2022 ›› Front
Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation (Petrobangla) and Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) are yet to pay Tk 5,373 crore to the Chattogram Customs House (CCH) as duty that may have an adverse impact on the country’s GDP growth.
Petrobangla has arrears totalling Tk 5,227.32 crore while BPC Tk 145.72 crore against LNG imports, according to the data available with Chattogram Customs House.
Customs House Commissioner Md Fyzur Rahman has sent a letter to the chairman of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) in this regard on October 27, according to sources in NBR.
Fyzur Rahman said they have also sent several letters to the authority concerned of Petrobangla asking them to pay their arrears. Even they have contacted them over telephone, but no arrears were paid since February, he added.
“So, we have sent a letter to the NBR and urged them to collect the money from Petrobangla and BPC,” he said.
In his letter, Fyzur Rahman said that Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is unloaded from cargoes at LNG terminal in Moheshkhali and added to the national grid directly from the floating terminal.
As per the customs rules, the state-run agencies should submit necessary documents, including the bill of entry, before unloading LNG, but they failed to submit the bill of entry although six months have already passed after LNG was released.
A bill of entry, part of the customs clearance procedure, is a legal document that is filed by importers or customs clearance agents on or before the arrival of imported goods.
Petrobangla has failed to pay Tk 5,227.32 crore as duty from December, 2021 to October 13 this year and also did not submit the bill of entry against all Import General Manifest (IGM) that contains the details of any goods since April of the current year which is connected with revenue worth Tk 1,350 crore, the letter said.
“This has hindered the reconciliation of goods by the Asycuda World System and disciplines of financial and revenue formalities,” it explained.
In the letter, the Chattogram Customs House has also requested the NBR to send letters to Petrobangla and the Ministry of Power, Energy & Mineral Resources, informing them about the overall condition.
On the other hand, state-run BPC is yet to pay arrears in duty totalling around Tk 145.72 crore. Among them, BPC’s wings Meghna Petroleum Limited has Tk 28.40 crore and Tk 79,000, Standard Asiatic Oil Company has Tk 5.73 crore and Tk 98,000 and Padma Oil Company Limited has Tk 116.73 crore and Tk 93,000 dues.
Annually, NBR provides 50 per cent of the total national budget while Chattogram Customs House alone contributes around 20 per cent to NBR’s collection. But in the current fiscal year, the declining trend in revenue collection may continue as a huge amount of arrears remain unpaid by the state-run agencies.
In the last fiscal year, NBR collected Tk 31,179 crore against the target of Tk 330,000 crore. Of the total, Chattogram Customs House alone contributed around Tk 60,000 crore to revenue collection.
Chattogram Customs House collected Tk 59,159 crore as revenue against the target of Tk 64,075 crore in the last fiscal year while in the current FY, it set a revenue collect target of Tk 74,206 crore. In the current FY, revenue collection from the state agencies declined sharply although its collection from private sectors remained unchanged.
