The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is going to make e-payment for import and export duties mandatory for businesses to pay from April next year.

Firms that do overseas trades using the Customs House at the Inland Container Depot (ICD) at Dhaka's Kamalapur will need to comply with the rule to pay import duty, taxes and fees though e-payment.

The compulsory rule of e-payment will be expanded for the rest of the customs houses from July next year.

Businesses will have to pay electronically for over Tk 200,000 of customs duty and taxes, said the NBR in a circular posted on its website recently.

From January 2022 onwards, electronic payment through fund transfer will become mandatory for payment of all types of import and export tariffs, the NBR said.

The revenue authority made the decision as it found that e-payment facility for customs, fees and charges did not become popular although three years passed since it launched the opportunity in 2017 for businesses to speed up clearance of goods and facilitate trade.

"The desired benefit is yet come," Khondaker Muhammad Aminur Rahman, in-charge of Customs Modernisation and International Trade at the NBR, said in the notification.

The customs authority said businesses paid only Tk 1,130 crore of import duties through e-payment gateway in fiscal year 2018-19. The amount was close to 2 percent of total customs duty collected in the same fiscal year.

Customs duty collection through e-payment increased in the next fiscal year 2019-20, but was still an insignificant portion of the total duty collected.

The NBR got Tk 4,110 crore between July and March 15, 2020, and the amount was only 7 percent of total customs duty it had collected in the last fiscal year.

The revenue administration said 41 banks are connected with the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system of Bangladesh Bank, and there is scope of e-payment through bank accounts.

However, the NBR said it has not been possible to take number of users to the desired level in absence of rules for compulsory use of e-payment facility to deposit customs duties.

As a result, importers are deprived of benefiting from the modern services, it added.

In absence of electronic payment, discrepancies in tax collection figures are seen frequently between data by the customs and offices of the Controller General of Accounts.

There is also risk of faking documents to payment, said the NBR.

"E-payment may play an effective role to prevent the falsifying of documents," NBR said, adding that import tariffs could be paid using bank accounts of importers and clearing and forwarding agents through the RTGS system.

The revenue authority said it wanted to begin a campaign among stakeholders from March this year, but that was not possible following the outbreak of Covid-19 in the country.

Now, initiatives have been taken to ensure compulsory use of e-payment in phases.

Besides, gathering in customs houses and other offices are discouraged because of the coronavirus situation, the NBR statement added.