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Revision of fees under Dutiable Commodities Regulations
Fees for dutiable commodities licences issued by the Customs and Excise Department and the related services provided under the Dutiable Commodities Ordinance will be revised with effect from December 6.
The new fees are stipulated in the Dutiable Commodities (Amendment) Regulation 1996, which is gazetted today (Friday).
Announcing the revision, a government spokesman said it was government policy to set fees based on the full-cost recovery principle.
He said most of these fees were set in 1963 when the Dutiable Commodities Ordinance was first enacted. While some were last revised in 1990, most had never been revised.
A recent costing review conducted by the department showed that most of these fees were substantially below cost, the spokesman explained.
"To avoid a sharp increase which may cause a burden to the dutiable commodities trade, we would revise most of the fees by phases over a five-year period in order to achieve 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 per cent cost recovery respectively.
"For those fees which are currently at nominal rate, they will be raised to 20 per cent cost recovery in the first phase of this fees revision exercise," he said.
"The impact of the fees revision on the dutiable commodities trade as well as on inflation is minimal since the increase is small in absolute terms and the fees constitute a very small proportion of total operating costs," the spokesman said.
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