Figurative exercise

There is always a lot of discussion on the poor recovery from the Customs and Central Excise Department, but nobody has pondered till now why the department is unable to collect the targeted revenue. Officials working in the department claim that if an opportunity is given to them, they can collect taxes on par with the Central Board of Direct Taxes. If the sources are to be believed, one section of the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Commerce is alleged to have connived to inflate the export figures and due to this, thousands of exporters are enjoying the privileges of the government’s generosity in India. There are exporters on paper who have never exported even a safety pin to any country but their turnover is in the range of `700-800 crore. There is another glaring example in Mumbai where a section of diamond exporters hypothecates diamonds to the bank, claiming crores, where the diamonds are worth peanuts. The government is aware that businessmen are exporting goods by over-invoicing thousands of crores and earning the duty drawback in crores. Similar things are happening in imports. When the government is in the process of camouflaging the figures to make the world believe that India is an exporting country, how can one expect the revenue gap to be bridged? Wait for the bigger story…