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Circular No 27/2019-Customs

F. No. 450/88/2019-Cus-IV
Government of India
Ministry of Finance,
Department of Revenue
(Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs)
*****
Room 227B, North Block
Dated: 3
rd
September, 2019
To
All Principal Chief Commissioners/ Chief Commissioners of Customs,
Customs & Central Taxes and Customs (Preventive).

All Principal Commissioners/ Commissioners of Customs, Customs & Central
Taxes and Customs (Preventive)

Madam / Sir,
Sub: Roll out of Project Import Module in ICES – reg.
Project Imports Scheme provides that all the goods imported for the purpose of
setting up of Industrial Project or substantial expansion of existing industrial projects
be subjected to single classification under heading 98.01 of Custom Tariff Act, 1975
and single rate of duty instead of merit assessment of imported goods. For this purpose,
Project imports registration as mandated by Project Imports Regulations, 1986 has been
happening manually till now. Bulky registers are being maintained by the field
formations for the debit entries of all the items of import. Further, the process of issuing
release advises to other ports, debiting bond and finalizing the project have also been
largely manual thus making the process cumbersome and impacting its efficiency.
2. To overcome the difficulties faced due to manual processing, Project Imports
module has been developed in ICES. Your kind attention is drawn to ICES Advisory
13/2019 dated 29.05.2019 issued in this regard wherein processes relating to Project
Import Module were explained. It is to inform that Project import module shall cover
following processes:
(a) Registration of a Project and generation of a Project number
(b) Bond Registration for Project Imports
(c) Filing of provisional BEs with project number and bond details. Item wise
debits in the project/bond for every BE
(d) Finalization of the Provisional BEs and re-crediting of the Bond
A. Registration
Project Registration functionality has been developed on the lines of license
registration. The registration has to be done in the LIC role under License Registration.
The same form as available at the time of registering licenses will be used for generating

project number in the System. Following points may be kept in mind while registering
a project.
a) Scheme code to be used is PI, Notification will be null.
b) All items of import have to be entered with quantity and value; No items of export.
c) Default validity has been kept as 84 months. But the same is amendable.
d) The limitation factor would be B-both value and quantity.
e) Sponsoring authority’s certificate details can be entered in Receipt No and date
fields.
f) Iss_By will be the code of the sponsoring authority (list of values in F7).
g) Bond details are mandatory. Only the bonds registered under the new bond category
of PI can be given during registration.
h) Value (CIF in foreign currency (FC) is mandatory.
Once the registration is complete in LIC role and then approved in APR role (under
license management), a 10-digit number license number would be generated by the
System with the first two digits as 99. This can be treated as the Project number, for
further quoting the same in the Bills of Entry.
B. Bond Registration
For the purposes of Project Imports, a new category of bonds with the code PI have
been created. This bond is a national provisional bond, and can be used for imports at any
port under a project. The bond registration is similar to any other bond in the roles of REB
and ACB. Only when a PI bond is registered can project be registered quoting the same in
registration form.
C. Filing of import declarations
Once a project (license) number is generated, the same can be used to file import
declarations similar to how declarations with EP licenses are filed. The BEs will have to
be filed with PI as the scheme code and the serial numbers of the items of import will also
have to be quoted as per the project registration along with the Project number in the
license table. The bond details will reflect similarly at the time of assessment and with the
corresponding debit value. The project ledger will also be maintained the same way as the
license ledger in the System with both item quantity and value debits. For imports at ports
other than the port of registration, online TRA can be issued in the System at the port of
registration. A detailed advisory on the filing of import declarations including necessary
information for the benefit of trade will follow.
D. Finalization of Project
The finalization of all the BEs under a project and re-crediting of the bond can be done
using the already existing options in the FAO and FDC roles.
3. To begin with, project registration and bond registration have been operationalized in
ICES. It is requested that all the live projects currently and hereafter be compulsorily

registered in the System as detailed in Para 1 and 2 above. This exercise may be started
immediately and all project registrations should be completed before 15
th
September, 2019
and filing of BE under Project Import on ICES should be mandatory from 16
th
September,
2019. Difficulties, if any, while registering may be emailed to team.ices@icegate.gov.in.

Yours faithfully


(Zubair Riaz)
Director(Customs)