FBR committee pledges EFS fixes

June 24, 2026 (MLN): A Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) special committee on the Export Facilitation Scheme (EFS) has committed to expeditious clearance of export consignments, prompt duty drawback payments, and elimination of procedural bottlenecks after meeting textile exporters at the APTMA Lahore office.

The committee comprising Chief Collector Exports Mohsin Rafiq, Chief Collector Customs Lahore Naveed Elahi, and Collector Customs Lahore Salman Afzal was received by Chairman APTMA Kamran Arshad, senior members representing Comfort Knitwear, Eastern Group, Nagina Group and Resham Textile, along with Secretary General Raza Baqir and a large number of textile exporters, according to a press release issued.

Mohsin Rafiq said FBR has deployed senior officers to directly engage all exporters' associations, identify systemic and procedural gaps in EFS, and propose legislative and administrative remedies.

He urged APTMA members to formally present all outstanding issues to the committee for resolution.

Naveed Elahi announced that EFS authorization renewals would henceforth be processed online and disposed of within 24 hours of submission of required documents, adding that auto-renewal based on past export performance is under consideration and expected to be launched shortly.

Customs officials acknowledged that most APTMA demands were genuine and would be addressed at the earliest.

Chairman APTMA Kamran Arshad flagged a range of persistent concerns, including abnormal delays in EFS authorization renewals, unlawful referral of cases to IOCO for capacity redetermination, and difficulties faced by indirect exporters in offloading EFS-manufactured goods.

He also raised long-pending audits, delays in release of post-dated cheques and guarantees, a sizeable backlog of CRFs with the Customs Automation Department, and the continued running of a parallel manual system alongside the fully automated EFS platform which he said must be discontinued immediately.

Kamran Arshad further noted that taxes and duties continue to be reflected at statutory rather than effective rates despite specific FBR rulings, and that valuation rulings are being unlawfully applied to EFS and export transactions.

APTMA proposed that Input-Output Ratios and analysis certificates be issued automatically on the basis of previously determined ratios and FBR Textile Notes.

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