Dhaka:The government of Bangladesh has embarked on a series of reforms targeting the bonded warehouse system, customs procedures, and export incentives. These measures aim to lower business costs, streamline import and export operations, and diversify the country's export base beyond the dominant readymade garments (RMG) sector.
According to United News of Bangladesh, the reform initiatives are designed to extend bond facilities to additional export-oriented industries, reduce regulatory obstacles for compliant businesses, expedite customs clearance, and stimulate investment in emerging export sectors. The bonded warehouse system has been crucial in the growth of the RMG industry by allowing duty-free import of raw materials for export production. The government now intends for other promising sectors to benefit from similar facilities.
As part of the reforms, existing bond-related regulations will be amended to enable all export-oriented sectors to import raw materials under bond facilities for manufacturing and exporting finished products. The government plans to ease compliance requirements by eliminating the annual bond audit necessity for fully export-oriented compliant RMG enterprises. Additionally, the validity of general bonds for fully export-oriented leather goods, footwear, towel, linen, and home textile enterprises will be extended from one year to three years.
The reforms also propose allowing units within 60 kilometers of their principal establishments to qualify for the Continuous Bond facility, regardless of commissionerate jurisdiction. Furthermore, the government intends to lift the limit on the quantity of raw materials that can be stored at bonded warehouses at any given time. Simplifying the transfer of bond licenses by removing the requirement for both outgoing and incoming owners to personally appear before customs officials for interviews is another significant change.
The deadline for bonded enterprises to obtain Utilisation Permission (UP) before shipment expiry will be relaxed from 48 hours to 24 hours. Additionally, fully export-oriented enterprises without bond licenses will be permitted to procure raw materials duty-free against back-to-back letters of credit.
To support export diversification, a new notification under the bonded warehouse system will enable duty-free imports of raw materials for jewelry production, facilitating the export of jewelry made from these materials under transparent and compliant procedures. Ten new sectors, including motorcycles, speedboats, fish processing, handicrafts, diversified jute products, diapers and sanitary napkins, crockery, tents, recycled cotton bags, and terry towels, will be allowed to import raw materials without bond licenses, subject to bank guarantees.
Furthermore, the government has taken steps to abolish the legal requirement for a minimum 30% value addition on goods produced using duty-free raw materials imported against bank guarantees without bond licenses. The Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) program will also see enhancements, with a proposal to double the rate of goods clearance under the system-based self-assessment method and the removal of the requirement for compliant businesses to submit updated audit reports when applying for AEO benefits.
The reforms aim to expedite customs clearance by allowing imported goods to be tested at private laboratories recognized by the Bangladesh Accreditation Board and meeting ISO standards, alongside governmental facilities. For local pesticide and agrochemical manufacturers, annual entitlement-based certification from the Ministry of Agriculture will replace the existing invoice-based certification requirement for raw material imports under concessional facilities.
Finally, the government has moved to abolish the minimum fine of Tk 50,000 for inadvertent general deviations involving small, low-value consignments arriving through postal or courier services. These reforms are expected to simplify procedures, improve the ease of doing business, and create opportunities for a broader range of domestic industries to compete in global export markets.