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ISLAMABAD : From July 1, 2006, the duty drawback payments to exporters will be transferred to their online bank accounts, reducing the time from several weeks to a few hours.

Official sources told Business Recorder on Monday that the new (duty drawback) system would be applicable from the next financial year, after announcement in the federal budget 2006-07. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has agreed to implement the CBR proposal.

Currently, the manual processing of claims takes several weeks due to interference from customs officials. According to CBR decision, communicated to the model customs collectorate Karachi and collector of customs, export, Karachi, the online payment system will operate without human intervention, and calculate duty drawback amount soon after the goods are cleared for export.

Sources said that the Board was co-ordinating with SBP and Banking Council for speedy online connectivity with the banks. As per new system, the exporter''s data on goods declaration would be fed into the ''computerised rebate system'' and it would automatically figure out the value of exports and amount of duty drawback.

This process would be completed within a few hours, and ''bank advice'' would be delivered online for payment of duty drawback claimed by the exporters.

Sources said that CBR would also amend the ''goods declaration (GD) form'' for inclusion of necessary columns ensuring online payment of duty drawback to the exporter by the banks.

The collectorate of Customs, (Exports), Karachi and Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) have jointly prepared a software to simultaneously process the GD for export as well as auto generation of ''rebate payment advise'' for electronic transmission to the SBP, through the new system.

Courtesy www.brecorder.com

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