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NBR sitting on PSI auditor bid

Vested interest groups resisted auditor appointment in last 9yrs to gobble up huge public money

Sharier Khan
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) could not appoint an auditor to review the activities of the Pre-Shipment Inspection (PSI) companies in the last nine years due to resistance from vested interest groups which helped some customs and PSI officials misappropriate hundreds of crores of taka each year.
Now on the fag end of the PSI system, NBR is
unenthusiastically sitting with an offer to appoint US company National Marine Consultants Inc (NMCI) as the auditor for a two-year term for a fee ofTk 140 crore.
"The PSI system will be abolished in December next. At this point, we are not sure about the benefit of having the auditor," said a highly-placed NBR source, adding, "But we have not closed the appointment bid. If the government wants, we will go ahead."
This appointment would have taken place last year had the vestea interest groups not planted negative news stories in different newspapers to shake the confidence of the caretaker government’s cabinet. The reports say that the Bangladesh Chemical and Industries Corporation (BCIQ had earlier blacklisted NMO. Later it was found that a taskforce made such a recommendation and the BQC had not blacklisted it
Though the caretaker government's cabinet was convinced that the negative news lacked substance, it refrained from making any decision to stay ou t of controversy.
Now the finance minister has sought the NBR's status report on the appointment of NMd and the board is working on it sources said.
If appointed, the auditor will audit 20 percent random samples of goods that received dean Report Finding (CRF) from the PSI companies and the customs department
"When the PSI system was introduced in 2000, it had a provision of an auditor. It was an odd idea as the PSI companies themselves are supposed to work as auditors,- said a top official. The government appointed three PSI companies for a five-year term.
But from the beginning the PSI companies themselves wanted to become the auditor. When the government through a tender selected a company, one of the PSI companies Cotecna resorted to the High Court challenging the selection in 2002. Cotecna was not a government appointed PSI company back then. The government did not pursue the case seriously and the appointment remained shelved.
' 'ln2O05.whenthegovtrtunent reappointed four PSI companies Cotecna was included. The company then dropped the High Court writ petition.
In 2006, the NBR once again moved to appoint the auditor. With only one or two candidates, the tender process lacked competition. In that tender, only one foreign company. NMCI. qualified However, as it did not provide the NBR with sufficient documents. NMCI lacked sufficient evaluation score for the job.
The NBR again floated a tender for the same job. This time NMCI supplied adequate documents required to get the job. When the NBR was preparing to seek the cabinet approval in mid 2008, some newspapers started negative reporting against the selection.
Finally in late 2008, the proposal for the appointment was tabled before the cabinet with clarification on the issues raised by the reports. The then finance adviser observed that the appointment might not be as useful as it would have been, if it was done earlier. Rather, the government would have to spend a lot for the appointment
"Since we shall stop using the PSI services, we are taking a different plan for future inspection of imports. We are automat -ing the ports. We are now using international information system from Bloomberg and others for valuations We have to increase the manpower base of the customs department,- said a source.
"Ultimately we shall have to do this job ourselves,- the source said ruling out the future of PSI in the country.
CHEATING THE EXCHEQUER Evasion and pilferage of import duties in laree scale deprives the national exchequer of thousands of crores of taxa in revenue. A section of unscrupulous customs
offitials joiriei hands with some PSI companies in such corrupt practices and much of it go unnoticed.
For instance, a team of the duties evaluation and internal review commissionerate reviewed the activities of the Custom House of Dhaka Group-4 and detected evasion of duty and excise worth of Tk 319.71 crore between January, 2006, and December, 2007. The team filed its report November 20 last year. The commissioner of the commissionerate asked the commissioner of Dhaka Group-4 to take appropriate legal action in this regard.
A break-down of this evasion shows that Dhaka Group-4 did not collect duty-excise worth Tk 4035 crore, incurred revenue loss worthTk 2.06 crore due to depreciation and inflicted excise loss of Tk277.29 crore as the department did not collect duties under the appropriate Harmonised System (HS)code.
This particular corruption befitted some mobile phone companies as the imported equipment includes GPRS, MMSC. SMSC, CRBT etc. The customs department, for example, taxed the GPRS equipment under a HS Code of8525.20.90 on September 28, 2006, and collected a tax of Tk 10,79,266. But the actual code is 8517.50.90 which demands an additional dutyofTk68,64,134.
Due to the lack of an auditor, such malpractices remain rampant Again, when the customs department detect such anomalies and served notice to the importer to pay the penalty, they just quote tne relevant PSI law that says as per the law the NBR is supposed to have an auditor who would give the final verdict if the tax was evaded or if it was the tax authority that made a mistake in assessing the right duty.