K82mil collected from fines

By GEORGINA KOREI
PAPUA New Guinea Customs chief commissioner David Towe says the income revenue generated by Customs over the past two years was mostly from the non-compliance payments and for false declaration of imported goods.
“In 2020, we collected almost K40 million and K42 million in the final quarter of 2021,” he said.
He said one of the major detection cases was generated from 40-foot containers of assorted alcohol products that was imported and was not properly declared resulting in the owner being penalised.
“The imported goods value was K1.2 million and the declaration was K46,000 but the targeting system was very robust to detect the fault,” he said.
“K1.8 million fine imposed to that company which was the highest penalty collected for false declaration and evading tax last year.”
Towe said the Customs risk based intelligence operations team was always on alert and that was how they managed to catch up with the false declaration.
“Penalties for non-compliance should be paid by every importer who breach the Customs Act.”
The commissioner said those importers that did not comply with customs law, escaped from taxes and breached the Customs Act would also be penalised.
“The maximum penalties under the Customs Act will be applied to those who do not comply with the law,” he said.
“Anyone thinking of evading taxes, we will catch up with you.”
Towe said it was important that all businesses complied with the industry practice standards. Customs auditors will check that compliance standards are followed. If you do not comply, we will mark you down and on the third count you may be penalised or even lose your licence.”
He said customs was improving their systems and procedures to ensure that the trading environment within the borders was facilitated well and safe.