DEA demands payment of additional DBK without supplementary claim

New Delhi, July 18 (UNI) The exporting community today demanded that the additional Duty Drawback claims, with retrospective effective from April 1, 2007, should be paid immediately and automatically without applying for supplementary claims.

According to its survey, Delhi Exporters Association (DEA) found that about 10,000 claims were being filed every day to custom department at various ports throughout the country and approximately there would be around one million cases of shipments of export.

Talking to reporters here, DEA President S P Agarwal said that each supplementary claim would entail additional six documents, matching with the previous documents submitted for the claim, and the concern departments would be flooded with more than seven million documents to be processed for distributing additional claim, announced by the Government recently.

He said that a DEA delegation met the Commerce Secretary G K Pillai and suggested him that the claims for drawback filed earlier by the exporters should be taken as a basis for calculation of additional drawback amount and the same should be transferred to their accounts within seven days.

For each additional claim, the exporter will have to attach six documents which include custom attested invoice, bank attested invoice, export promotion copy of shipping bill, bank realisation certificate, a set of supplementary drawback papers and a covering letter and all these documents should match the previously filed documents.

As per the relief package to exporters for the loss due to rupee appreciation, the Government has announced two to three per cent additional DBK on various items retrospectively from April 1, 2007.

Mr Agarwal said a fresh application to claim additional DBK would result in a big procedural delay and huge paper work. The current DBK payments will also be slowed down due to this new additional work.

DEA President said that all the informations were already fed in the customs' database at the time of making export shipments.

The customs department would only have to make change in amount of DBK and ''make sure this is in exporters' bank account within seven days.'' He said that Commerce Secretary had agreed to the suggestion and assured that he would request the department of revenue to consider this proposal.

Mr Agarwal also demanded for future a flat rate of DBK of 15-20 per cent be fixed as it was in China.

DEA President made a fervent appeal that this additional payment be made to exporters immediately and automatically (Suo Moto) without submitting any supplementary claims or papers.

UNI