Customs detected Tk 6.18 billion in lost revenue through post-clearance audit (PCA) in the last financial year amid growing use of green channel and misdeclaration of trade value, sources said.
The customs wing of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) conducted the PCA on suspect import consignments released through green channels or delivery availed without scrutiny.
A total of 2959 PCAs were conducted last year, 18.01-percent higher than that of FY25.
In FY 2024-25, the customs houses conducted 2506 post-clearance audits and detected Tk 859.3 million in lost revenue, said a report on PCA, prepared by the customs department.
In June alone, customs conducted 711 PCA cases -- the highest number recorded in a single month so far -- involving Tk 2.07 billion in revenue.
A senior customs official says misdeclaration and wrong HS (Harmonized System) codes have been found on a large scale on the goods released earlier through the customs ports.
"We have found high-value goods with higher customs duty, such as cosmetics and beauty care, prone to misdeclaration," he added.
The Customs Valuation and Internal Audit Commissionerate conducted the highest number of PCAs among the customs offices. The directorate alone conducted 1,729 such cases, detecting revenue worth Tk 5.37 billion.
Through import, bank-and other-documentation checks, the customs and VAT offices conduct the PCA, the official has said.
"Usually, customs release of goods become faster due to introduction of national single window and other automation steps, but risk lies on revenue loss due to misdeclaration of goods," he added,.
Post-clearance audit is a part of the Customs Act which was not practised intensively like in the previous year.
Of the total amount detected through PCAs last year, around Tk 541.8 million as revenue has already been recovered.
In contrast, only Tk 50 million was recovered from the revenue detected through PCA in FY 2024-25.
PCA is a customs control mechanism to verify trader compliance and check import-export declarations after goods have already been released from the ports.
Delay in release of goods is one of the major concerns for both local and foreign investors.
Dr Zaidi Sattar, Chairman of Policy Research Institute (PRI), in his contribution to the Report of the National Task Force on Tax Reforms (2026), titled 'Tax Policy for Development: A Reform Agenda for Restructuring the Tax System', suggested strengthening PCA and intelligence-led risk management to cut import time and abolishing customs-valuation system.
None of South Asia or ASEAN's major customs administrations maintains a valuation database for duty assessment, he said, recommending Bangladesh to opt for the Vietnam model
"All rely on transaction value, then go for risk intelligence and PCA," he said.
He said using ASYCUDA World's price analytics only to flag risk and avoiding fixed price charts are highly vulnerable to corruption.
Bangladesh, a signatory to WTO Customs Valuation Agreement, is known to work with exceptions to the standard rules for a significant portion of import transactions.
ASYCUDA, the UNCTAD customs package, launched in 1994, remains underutilised while automated clearance of import-export cargos is superseded by manual processing of files for all the 30 years of ASYCUDA operation.
Stress has been placed on aligning Bangladesh's customs valuation regime fully with the WTO Customs Valuation Agreement (CVA) by shifting from discretionary front-end price controls to a modern system built on transaction value, risk intelligence, and post-clearance audit -- the global best-practice trio used in Vietnam, the EU, Morocco, Rwanda, and Chile.
