The National Board of Revenue has formulated a new Customs Agents Licensing Rules-2016 tightening the provisions for awarding the licences in a bid to bring discipline in the sector to facilitate international trade. The rules also reduced the percentage of share of foreigners in a joint venture company to 40 per cent from the existing 49 per cent as criteria for getting the licence under joint venture initiative to promote the domestic companies. The NBR has recently issued the rules replacing the old ones formulated in 2009. The rules also introduced penalty for attempting duty evasion by the customs agents. A licence holder will face a penalty of up to 25 per cent of estimated amount of duty which could be evaded due to his or her activities or minimum Tk 1 lakh, which is higher, the rules said. The revenue board also put a restriction on customs houses and customs stations on giving licence at its own consideration as customs houses and stations will have to take prior permission from the revenue board for awarding licences. Licence of a company or person will also not be renewed if the customs authority found involvement of the company or person in duty evasion or assisted the importer or exporter in duty evasion. Officials of the revenue board said that there were many allegations of involvement of customs agents in duty evasion on behalf their clients. Customs authority formulated the new rules streamlining the previous rules to ensure discipline in the sector, they said. Regarding reduction of percentage of shares of foreigners, they said that the NBR brought the changes to promote domestic companies and restrict foreign companies in services sectors in the country in line with the demand of the local agents. Customs agents are involved in activities including clearing and forwarding of the imported goods and export items at the customs houses and customs stations. According to the rules, the terms of the licence have also been increased to 5 years from the previous 4 years. The licensing authority headed by an additional commissioner at relevant customs house or customs station will have to take prior permission for awarding new customs agents license. In the application, licensing authority will have to describe the rationale behind the decision of giving new licenses. The revenue board will give the permission to the authority to issue new licenses after examining the application, scrutinizing the existing licenses and statistics of import and export through the customs houses and customs stations in last five years. Applicants will have to submit income tax certificate, bank solvency certificate, updated trade license, copy of national identity card and other documents along with application for the license. The applicant will have to submit savings certificate worth Tk 3 lakh for license to work at customs house and Tk 1.50 lakh for customs stations. A bond form worth Tk 1 lakh for customs house and Tk 50,000 for customs stations will also have to be submitted along with the application. The rules also put a restriction on providing customs agents licence to fully foreign-owned companies to operate in the country. The authority will not renew the licence if the licence holders are considered as highly risky agents due to their involvement in misdeclaration and illegal release of goods. The authrority will cancel the licence and impose penalty if the licence holders breach any conditions of the rules, show negligence in performing activities, misbehave with customs officials, fail to cooperate with the customs officials in unearthing misdeclaration of his or her clients, hide the incidences of misdeclaration and duty evasion and assist their clients in duty evasion. The range of penalty will be up to two times of evaded duty because of activities of the licence holders or minimum Tk 2 lakh, which is higher. The penalty will be the highest Tk 2 lakh or minimum Tk 50,000 for activities not related to duty evasion.
