Our economy is losing huge amount of revenue in the form of taxes and duties every year through smuggling of auto parts. The fact is that these auto parts smugglers usually work in collusion with government authorities to bring inferior or substandard auto parts in the country. This results in severely damaging our auto parts industry and the usage of these imported inferior parts also affect the performance of the vehicles and endanger the safety of automobile users.
Under the existing Customs rules, auto parts classification is one of the major issues that affect auto parts imports since duty is calculated on the basis of weight rather than value. This creates wide disparity in the valuation of imported parts and the net result is that local auto parts manufacturers lose their competitiveness.
In order to curtail this menace, the government should implement realistic Customs rules, take effective measures to completely block smuggling of auto parts and ensure recovery of 16% sales tax from all auto parts importers and sellers.
It extremely important to enforce these measures in order to safeguard availability of genuine parts and also to protect the local auto parts industry.
SAMI UR REHMAN
Islamabad
