Kathmandu, August 25

The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has pledged to introduce stronger policies and take immediate action to reduce revenue leakage at the customs and other inland revenue collection points.

Addressing a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee of the Legislature-Parliament here today, Revenue Secretary at MoF Shishir Kumar Dhungana, said that the government will take serious measures against revenue leakage to meet the revenue target of Rs 730 billion for current fiscal.

“The government has initiated multiple reform programmes to bring about transformative changes in the revenue sector, which will help us to meet the revenue collection target in this fiscal year,” he said.

Dhungana also informed that the government is collecting data regarding market price of 300,000 items and will tally the market price with the price that has been registered at the customs offices by the importers. “If the market price of the goods and the price registered with the customs offices do not match, we will change the collection system,” he said.

The government has been collecting customs revenue as per the self-declaration of prices by importers. “The self-declaration process is, however, questionable and if we do find discrepancies then the customs evaluation process will be changed,” he said.

According to Dhungana, the government is also planning to implement a mandatory provision whereby payments for imported items besides from India have to be made through the banking channel. “We have seen some problems regarding payments for goods that are imported from China,” he said.