The National Board of Revenue and Bangladesh Bank are going to introduce electronic letters of credit to prevent use of fake LCs as well as to facilitate importers and exporters in smooth international trade, officials concerned said. They said the system would check tax dodging through submitting fake LCs to the customs offices. The online or e-LC system will be introduced under the National Single Window in which all activities related to import and export to be conducted online instead of existing manual system, they said.
Before making the e-LCs fully operational, the revenue board and the central bank are set to carry out a pilot programme at Sonali Bank from January 25 to test the effectiveness of the initiative, officials of the revenue board said.
They said the system would be introduced for all banks soon based on the experiences of the pilot programme.
A high official of the central bank told New Age that they had already tested the system. Under the system, customs offices will be able to verify the authenticity of LCs though the National Single Window as the banks will upload the LCs on the Bangladesh Bank’s foreign exchange transaction monitoring dashboard, he said.
The official said the BB would forward the LC certificates consisting of information required for the customs to the ASYCUDA World system of the revenue board from its FETM dashboard so that customs officials were able to crosscheck genuineness of LCs.
Customs officials are currently verify the authenticity of LCs manually. Customs houses send the documents related to LCs submitted by the traders to banks seeking genuineness of the documents.
In many cases, unscrupulous bankers authorise fake LCs as genuine with the connivance of dishonest traders, they said adding that the manual crosschecking process also took long time resulting delay in clearance of imported goods.
‘Online crosschecking of LCs will prevent fake LCs and duty evasion,’ a high official of the revenue board told New Age on Wednesday.
Through the fake LCs, the traders show less value of LCs through providing fake or duplicate LCs to evade taxes, he said.
The unscrupulous traders also sell the goods imported duty free under bonded warehouse facility in open market resulting revenue losses of the government, he added.
Bangladesh Bank officials said customs officials would get the actual value of LCs in a moment as e-LCs would be forwarded to the customs system.
The system will also reduce the hassle and time of importers and exporters as they will not need to go to scheduled banks to fill up the letters of credit authorisation forms to open LCs, they said.
Many traders want to make payment of their customs duties and taxes electronically directly from their accounts without visiting banks or customs offices, a BB official said.
After introduction of e-LCs and the NSW, they will be able to complete electronic payment of taxes sitting at office or home, he said.
-With New Age input
