Customs to auction off 108 cars
Customs authorities are planning to auction off on June 23 a total of 108 cars, including ones of luxury brands BMW, Land Rover, Mitsubishi, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus, brought to the Chattogram port around a decade ago duty-free under a UN convention.
The "UN Customs Convention on the Temporary Importation of Private Road Vehicles of 1954" facilitates a privilege known as Carnet de Passage.
It allows tourists to bring their vehicles to a country without payment of customs duties, provided the vehicles are taken back with the foreign nationals.
Bangladesh was not a signatory, and the National Board of Revenue (NBR) in April 2011 introduced a rule which stipulated that foreign nationals provide security deposits amounting to the duties and taxes of the imported cars.
From 2013, the NBR decided to stop entertaining the facility altogether.
However, 369 luxury vehicles were brought to the Chattogram port between 2008 and 2012 under the facility. By 2013, 249 were released from the port.
Now a majority of the remining ones are being sold off as neither taxes have been paid against those nor have those been taken back abroad.
Earlier, customs authorities tried holding auctions for these five times but failed to get expected prices due to complexities over the issuance of a clearance permit (CP) by the Ministry of Commerce, a prerequisite for cars over five years old.
Now the CPs for the cars are available and the customs authorities hope to get a good response.
According to the auction tender notice, bidders will be able to submit related documents at an e-auction link on Bangladesh Customs website or physically in Chattogram, Dhaka and Mongla custom stations between June 12 and 13 this year.
Individual bidders can easily attend the auction submitting their national identity card and TIN certificate while for organisations trade license, VAT registration number and TIN number are required.
"We took several initiatives to ensure transparency in the auction activities and increase general people's participation," Md Al Amin, deputy commissioner of Custom House, Chattogram, told The Daily Star.
"We will organise a learning session and enable physical visits for bidders from June 1," he added.
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