Legal expert: Postponing Tariff Law requires issuing new law by Parliament

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The legal expert Tareq Harb stressed that “The delay of applying the Customs Tariff law requires issuing new law by the Parliament includes specifying a new date for its implementation.” Harb said “The law (No.34) of 2011, the first amendment law for the Tariff law (No. 22), 2012, was issued to extend postponing the implementation of the law till 30/6/2012 which means that 1/7/2012 will be the first day of implementing the Tariff law.” “If it is preferred to extend the postponement for one year or more, then this requires issuing a new law by the Iraqi Parliament to specify a new date for applying the tariff law which imposes the customs duty on goods entering Iraq,” He added. Harb continued saying that “We uphold issuance of this law since it will highly increase the prices of the imported goods especially for those goods which the law has decided to impose customs duty that exceeds 50% of its value, for example, if the commodity sold today with IQD 10,000 it would be sold with IQD 15,000.” It is worth to mention that “The Council of Ministers has called the Parliament to postpone implementing the tariff law until completing the measures and means of applying it,” asking “The Ministry of Finance to explain the practical and technical reasons that justify the postponement and give the time limit required to delay implementing the law.”