OICCI members had an interactive meeting with the Joint Secretary (JS), Tariff Policy Wing, Ministry of Commerce, Muhammad Ashfaq, on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, to discuss the OICCI Duty Structure/ Tariff Rationalization Proposals for the upcoming fiscal budget 2024-2025, which were earlier submitted to the Ministry of Commerce and National Tariff Commission (NTC).

Ashfaq was very receptive and supportive towards the OICCI proposals. He assured supports for all the proposals for elimination of additional custom duty and regulatory duty on essential raw materials, which are either not locally available or in limited supply, used for local manufacturing and to remove the disparity along-with specific sectors.

The representatives of member companies one-by-one presented their specific sectorial proposals along with the broader rational to support their proposals. The JS informed that the proposals will be considered by his office, but noted that final decisions would be made after consultation with the policy board of the National Tariff Commission. The proposals will then be presented to the Finance Ministry and FBR for consideration in the upcoming fiscal budget 2024-25.

To adopt a focused approach the JS requested each member company that had submitted tariff proposals to separately share a shorted list of 4 to 5 priority HS codes directly with the JS office, copying OICCI. For pharmaceutical proposals, the JS requested routing them via DRAP and MOH as well.

Few members had joined the meeting in person at Islamabad and also had separate discussions on their specific proposal with the JS, such as Abolishing 20% FED on Formal Packaged Juice Industry, duty structure of Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) industry, and custom duty on import of RM/PM for pharma industry.