The National Board of Revenue will sign a bilateral agreement with Mexico to exchange information on trade and customs related matters in a bid to prevent tax evasion by importers and exporters and smuggling of goods. ‘The revenue board has taken the initiative to check customs related offences and tax evasion in trade between the two countries,’ a high official of the NBR told New Age on Tuesday.
As a part of the move, an NBR delegation will visit Mexico later this month to finalise the agreement, he said.
Mexico has become an important and potential market for the Bangladeshi products as its exports to the country has gradually been increasing over the years, officials said.
According to a study of Bangladesh Tariff Commission, there is a huge potential to boost Bangladesh’s export particularly of ready made garments, footwear and leather goods to Mexico.
The Bangladesh’s export to the North American country rose to $109.74 million in 2011-2012 from $90.48 million in 2010-2011, Export Promotion Bureau data showed.
Mexico has become seventh top non-traditional market, beyond Europe and the USA, for the Bangladeshi RMG products.
Of the $109.74 million earned from the exports to the country in 2011-2012, $98.65 million came from the export of RMG products, the data showed.
The trade balance is heavily in favour of Bangladesh as it imported products worth $6.38 million from Mexico in 2010-11, the BTC data showed.
Officials of the customs wing of the NBR said that dishonest businessmen evaded duties and taxes in importing goods through under-invoicing by which they hid actual prices of imported products and through declaring false information of products and their prices.
Once the agreement between Bangladesh and Mexico is signed, customs offices of both countries will share trade related general and intelligence information including goods’ import prices, volume, quality, customs declaration, shipping documents to check tax evasion and facilitate trade through legal channel, the officials said.
The countries will also provide administrative assistance in recovery of customs claims and detect harmful and smuggled products.
The agreement will also help the governments to check trade-based money laundering.
Currently, Bangladesh has a bilateral customs information sharing deal known as ‘agreement on mutual administrative assistance in customs matters’ with Turkey, the NBR officials said.
The government is also interested to sign such bilateral deal with other countries including its big trade partners China and India, they said.
-With New Age input
