India’s Customs Duty Architecture Set For Major Overhaul For Fast, Efficient Overseas Trade: CBIC Chairman

The Union government is planning on making wide-ranging changes to the existing customs duty architecture that will improve the speed and efficiency of India’s overseas trade, Economic Times has reported.

“We want to go in for something which will be radically different from what we have been doing. We are going to venture into a new territory called faceless assessment. We could start a pilot in a month’s time,” said S Ramesh, Chairman of Central Board of Indirect Taxes (CBDT) in an interview with Economic Times.

Under the proposed overhaul, the government plans to do away face-to-face interactions with officials in the customs offices, automate the release of goods from the ports and provide businesses with the ability to track their shipments remotely.

The Information Technology systems used in ports will be integrated with the customs portal. Such measures will not only facilitate faster approval processes but also help weed out corruption and undue interference by the bureaucracy.

Under the current government, India has substantially improved its ranking in World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report (EODB). In the 2017 report, it jumped 30 places and broke into the top 100 league for the first time since the index’s inception. In 2018, India’s rank further improved to 77 out of 190 countries.

Also Read: Ease Of Doing Business Is Not Ease Of Filing Taxes