Cracking down upon companies for allegedly taking undue benefits from customs duty exemption for export promotion, customs sleuths at the Mumbai airport cargo recovered `5.64 crore of tax between April and May this year. Around 70 per cent of the companies are Gujarat-based pharmaceutical firms. Also, for the financial year 2012-13, the department had recovered `50 crore in such cases, along with `16 crore by auctioning the immovable assets of such companies.
Explaining the issue, customs officials said that firms are exempt from customs duty for importing raw materials, provided they export finished products from the same within a stipulated period of time. “Once you avail of duty exemption, you have to meet ‘export obligations’. These companies imported the raw material around four years ago by availing the duty exemption, but did not register any exports. Later on, we began sending them notices and subsequently recovered the primary duty applicable at the time of import, along with interests. `5.64 crore were recovered between April and May this year. During the financial year 2012-2013, we also recovered around `50 crore in this manner,” said airport customs commissioner (cargo) Roopam Kapoor.