According to a government source, the investigation was initiated on a tip-off by a leading wool importer. Though it is too earlier to guess the volume of misappropriation, a snap investigation has revealed a huge mismatch between volume of foreign currency taken out of the country for wool imports and woolen carpet produced here. [break]
There is a possibility that the bank drafts and telegraphic transfer (TT) that local banks have issued for wool imports from Tibet might have partially been siphoned off to personal account abroad, said the source.
Nepal has been allowing the payment of imported commodities from Tibet through bank drafts and TT due to various complications seen in the past for the settlement of payments.
The problem we are facing at the moment is that Department of Customs also doesn´t have reliable statistics on volume of imports of wool from Tibet, as the custom duty wool import is nil.
"Almost all the statistics that we keep about imported goods are based on customs that the department mobilizes. The databases of imported goods that don´t carry any custom duty have not been managed properly,” conceded one of the government officials.
However, the government official, who preferred to be unnamed, told myrepublica.com that the central bank would be able to trace the amount within a week or so since it has already asked all commercial banks to provide details of drafts and TT that they have issued to import raw wool from Tibet.
"But, since we don´t have data of imported wool, it will be almost impossible to find out the extent of mismatch between stated volume through draft or TT and imported volume," said the official.
Meanwhile, Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has made changes on the wool imports regulations with immediate effect. As per the new directive issued to commercial banks on Sunday, wool importers from Tibet now will have to produce a custom guarantee in the form of bank check worth 2 percent of the import value.
The directives has also made it mandatory for wool importers to produce Foreign Exchange Regulation Form -- a letter issued by custom offices certifying the entry of imported good into the country -- to get back the two percent guarantee.
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