Islamabad: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Wednesday provided notification of SRO 1640(I)/2019; wherein it announced the operationalisation of the second phase of the China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement (FTA), a news source reported.
The board announced this decision as per the agreed protocol where the offer list was transposed after deliberations with the Ministry of Commerce and the SRO was developed.
The SRO will become operational from January 1, 2019 and will supersede the old SRO659(I)2007. The FTA eliminates tariff on second categories in the offer list. These are A0, A7, A15, MOP1, MOP2, C1 and C2.
The customs duties in 3,251 tariff lines in the A0 category will be eliminated completely. The goods under this category will be free of customs duty from January 1.
Under the category A07, the duties will be progressively reduced and eliminated over a period of 7 years. Similarly for A15, the duties will be reduced and eliminated from year 4 to year 7 of the FTA.
Under the margin of preference 1 (MOP1), the customs duties will be reduced by 20% of the base rate from January 1 and in MOP2 the duty structure will be reduced by 20% from the base rate in two years.
The customs duties in category C1 will remain at base rates and in category C2 will not be subject to any concession.
