FinMin Clear Green Strategy For CBEC.

New Delhi, Aug 16 (PTI) The Finance Ministry today gave its nod to a new green strategy for the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) under which officers would be trained for monitoring international trade in environmentally sensitive goods.

"The Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has given his go-ahead to an ''Environment Strategy'' for the CBEC that would change the way business is done by the Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax officials," an official statement said.

It said the strategy formalises a concept paper, ''The Greening of Indian Customs'', which encompasses various legal, enforcement and administrative measures to ensure the department''s core functions are sensitive to the environment.

"This includes the mandated role of the Customs and its premier intelligence agency, Directorate Revenue of Intelligence (DRI) in implementing multilateral environmental agreements (Basel Convention, Cartagena Protocol, CITES, etc.) as well as relevant domestic laws (Customs Act, 1962, Environment Protection Act, 1988)," the statement said.

As part of this, officers of the department are to be trained for monitoring international trade in environmentally sensitive goods.

It would also include sensitising officers of DRI and Customs to enhanced detection of environmental violations, besides creation of a database and dissemination of relevant environmental information.

The strategy also seeks to protect officers from hazardous substances by providing radiation detection kits, dematerialise documents and eliminate paper documentation,
promote web-based communication and develop and implement green standards for infrastructure.

"CBEC emphasises that besides contributing to a cleaner environment, decisions such as reducing documentation would serve the objective of trade facilitation by reducing transaction costs," the statement said.

Source : news.in.msn.com