About 93,000 kg of imitation jewelery (jewellery) worth Tk 10.5 crore has been lying in the warehouse of Jessore’s Benapole land port for two months due to customs clearance complications. Due to non-exemption, on the one hand, the quality of these products is getting damaged, on the other hand, the importer has to pay other charges including warehouse rent. They said that they have faced a big financial loss.
As announced by the National Board of Revenue (NBR), import duty on ordinary imitation jewelery is $5 per kg and gold plated jewelery is at $8 per kg. The importers said that the jewelery seized by them was of ordinary imitations. But Benapole Customs officials want to charge them eight dollars per kg as gold-plated jewellery. But the importers said that they are unable to pay the duty at that rate. They have applied for a lab test of the product. But Benapole Customs officials have not sent the product samples for lab tests even in the last one month. Traders are not able to discount the products due to this complication.
Sources of importers and Benapole Port have informed that three importers named Replace Limited, Ma Enterprises and Salman Enterprises of Dhaka imported 92 thousand 743 kg of imitation jewelery products from India through Benapole Port in three consignments between June 11 and 23. The import value of these products is about 5 crore 52 lakh taka and against this the minimum duty is 4 crore 92 lakh taka.
The importers say there is no gold plated product in the three consignments. All are plain imitations plated with gold, which will be charged at the rate of $5 per kg. But even after one and a half to two months passed, the customs officials did not allow three exemptions on the consignment.
Mostafizur Rahman, chairman of the importing company Replace Limited, said, ‘We made a written request to the Commissioner of Benapole Customs a month ago to send the product sample for lab test. But for unknown reasons he is not interested in doing lab tests.’
Abdul Hakim, commissioner of Benapole Custom House, said that imitation jewelery has been taxed at $8 per kg without testing. For this, the tariff is charged at the same rate this time as well. Importers have written to ABR in this regard. No instructions have come from there yet.