Airport’s duty-free shop caught in duty row

Mumbai: The Mumbai Customs has ordered the Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) to pay up Rs 182.30 crore in duty and accrued interest for not being able to produce records of sale at its duty-free shops at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport at Sahar.
ITDC is permitted to import goods without paying duty and sell them to international passengers at the airport in its duty-free shops by submitting a bond to the Customs department.
As per the bond, ITDC is supposed to maintain a stock register of various commodities imported by it, record every sale by preparing serially numbered vouchers in duplicate—one for the passenger and the other for the duty-free shop. The copy with the duty-free shop should be made available for inspection by the Customs.
ITDC would import goods and stock it in a warehouse in the premises of Chefair near Sahar Airport. If the goods are not moved from the warehouse to the duty-free shops within a year, then ITDC would have to extend the bond.
Between October 1998 to March 2003, Customs issued 441 notices, but ITDC couldn’t submit a list of goods lying at the warehouse for more than a year. Nor could it produce records of sale to international passengers.
01/06/07 N Ganesh/Mumbai Newsline

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Categories: Airports Jun 2007