Three Months in Bond: S.R.O. 1629(I)/2026, Perishable Goods and the Warehouse Licensee Who Now Answers for Spoilage

On 15th October 2026 a notification of the Federal Board of Revenue dated 18th September 2026, S.R.O. 1629(I)/2026, comes into field and replaces a list that had stood since 27th February 1999. It names the goods that are “perishable goods” for the purposes of Section 98 of the Customs Act, 1969 (Act IV of 1969), and that label decides how long an importer may leave goods in a customs bonded warehouse before duty falls due on them in full. It also takes packaged edible goods carrying a manufacturer’s expiry date out of the perishable class “for the purposes of warehousing surcharge”, and it makes that relief depend upon a certificate, signed by the licensee of the warehouse, under which the licensee accepts that it “shall be liable to action” if the goods become unfit for human consumption through inadequate storage. Every importer of dates, dry fruit, cheese, tea or cooking oil who uses a bonded warehouse, and every licensee who runs one, has sixteen days to prepare.

What the notification is, and what it is not

The three months are not in the notification. Section 98(1) of the Act provides that warehoused goods, “other than perishable goods notified by the Board”, may remain in the warehouse for six months from the date of their admission, “and perishable goods so notified may remain in the warehouse for a period of three months”. The period is Parliament’s; the Board decides only which goods fall into the shorter class.

The Table to S.R.O. 1629(I)/2026 has twenty nine entries: betel leaves; butter; bidi leaves and bidi; betel nuts; cheese; coconuts (seeds); X-ray films; dates; dry fruits; eggs; non-essential oils; food grains; fish; ginger and garlic; hides and skins; live trees, plants and roots; milk powder; meat; onions; apples; sweets and confectionery; soft drinks; sugar; spices; syrups, jams, jellies, marmalades, ketchup and similar condiments; tobacco other than unmanufactured processed tobacco; tea, cocoa and coffee; any vegetables and fruits not specified above; and edible vegetable oil and oil seeds. Business Recorder, which carried the notification on 21st September 2026, described “approximately 25 categories”; the Board’s own scan numbers them one to twenty nine, and it is the scan that the Collectorates will apply.

The proviso for packaged goods

The proviso to the notification provides that “any edible product having an expiry date specified by the manufacturer and printed on the packing, imported in preserved, canned, bottled or packaged form, shall not be treated as perishable goods, for the purposes of warehousing surcharge”, upon two conditions: that the goods are stored in accordance with the manufacturer’s storage conditions and so that they “do not become unfit for human consumption during the warehousing period”, and that the licensee certifies, in the form at Annex-A, that the warehouse has the facilities to store them so. The importer or its clearing agent uploads that certificate when filing the into-bond goods declaration.

The words “for the purposes of warehousing surcharge” need serious reconsideration before the first consignment is filed under them. Surcharge under Section 98 arises on extension. The proviso to Section 98(1) allows the period to be extended “in case of non-perishable goods” on sufficient cause, on advance payment of surcharge at one per cent a month on the duty and taxes involved, by the Additional Collector for up to one month, the Collector for up to six months and the Chief Collector for such period as he thinks fit. The same proviso then closes with a condition that an extension “in case of perishable goods” shall be granted only if the goods are fit for human consumption. The most coherent reading of the notification is therefore that a tin of cheese or a bottle of ketchup carrying an expiry date is to be treated as non-perishable when its owner seeks an extension on payment of surcharge.

What the notification does not say is whether the same tin now enjoys six months in bond from admission or still only three. Section 98(1) knows one class of “perishable goods so notified” for both purposes, and a notification which makes goods perishable for the period and non-perishable for the surcharge divides a class the Section does not divide. The Board may rely on Section 98(3), which lets it “regulate” by notification the period for which goods or classes of goods may remain in the warehouse, provided the period is not less than one month; but S.R.O. 1629(I)/2026 recites only Section 98, and it does not state a period for the packaged goods at all. Until the Collectorate says otherwise in writing, the safe course for an importer is to treat packaged goods on the list as having three months, and to regard the proviso as easing the extension and not as lengthening the first period.

The licensee’s certificate

Paragraph (iii) of the certificate at Annex-A is the part that licensees should read twice. The licensee certifies that “in the event of any deviation from the above, or the goods being found unfit for human consumption on account of inadequate or non-compliant storage, the undersigned shall be liable to action under the relevant provisions of the Customs Act, 1969, and the rules made thereunder without prejudice to any other action that may be taken under the law”. It is signed per consignment, carries the signatory’s CNIC, and is filed by the importer, not by the licensee.

Section 98 is a power to name goods, not to create a liability, and the certificate does not pretend otherwise; it points to “the relevant provisions” of the Act. Those provisions are narrower than the certificate’s tone suggests.

Section 116 already makes the licensee of a private warehouse “responsible for their due receipt therein and delivery therefrom, and their safe custody while deposited therein”, but it measures that responsibility “according to the quantity, weight or gauge reported by the officer of customs”, with an allowance for natural loss. It is a duty to account for goods, not a warranty of their condition. Section 13(3) allows the Collector to cancel a licence “for infringement of any condition laid down in the license or for any violation of any of the provisions of this Act or any rules”, after the licensee has been given a proper opportunity of showing cause. And Section 32(1)(a) makes it an offence to sign or deliver to an officer of customs any “certificate or other document whatsoever” knowing or having reason to believe it to be false in any material particular.

A licensee who certifies facilities it does not have is exposed under Section 32 on the day it signs, whether or not a single carton spoils. A licensee whose goods do spoil faces a show cause notice upon its licence under Section 13(3), and the Collector will have the licensee’s own signed statement of its facilities in the file. What the certificate does not do is make the licensee answerable for the duty on spoiled goods, and nothing in Section 98 could make it so.

Who actually pays when the dates go bad

The owner pays. Section 108 allows warehoused goods damaged or deteriorated “due to an unavoidable accident or cause” to be reappraised and the duty reduced in proportion, and Section 115 allows the Collector to remit the duty on goods “lost or destroyed by unavoidable accident or cause”, notice being given within forty eight hours. Spoilage through improper storage is, by the notification’s own logic, avoidable; hence neither Section helps. Section 111(c) then allows the appropriate officer to demand “the full amount of duty” with rent, penalties and surcharge from the owner on bonded goods lost or destroyed otherwise than as those Sections provide, and Section 112 allows the post-dated cheque the owner lodged under Section 86 to be encashed once the warehousing period has run.

The importer is therefore the one person the certificate does not protect. Its recourse against a licensee whose storage failed lies in contract and the ordinary civil law, not in the Customs Act, and the certificate is not an indemnity.

Goods already in bond on 15th October 2026

The notification is silent on goods admitted before it comes into field, and the silence is the point. Section 98(1) runs the period “following the date of their admission into the warehouse”, and a class that stood outside the 1999 list and inside the 2026 one moves from six months to three by force of the new list alone. A consignment of such goods admitted on 1st September 2026 expected to stay in bond until 1st March 2027; read against the new list, its period ends on 1st December 2026, and from that day Section 111(b) exposes it to a demand for the full duty. Whether a period that began to run under one notification can be shortened by a later one without express words is a question a Collectorate should not be left to answer against an importer who acted on the law as it stood when the goods went in.

The 1999 list is not on the Board’s website and the press has not compared the two, hence every importer with goods in bond should check its consignments against S.R.O. 125(I)/1999 as its clearing agent holds it.

What to do before 15th October 2026

An importer holding goods of any class on the new list should work out both periods for each consignment and, where the shorter one bites, apply to the Collector before 15th October 2026 for a written position that the period running at admission governs, or failing that for an extension under Section 98(1). An importer of packaged edible goods should settle with the licensee who produces the Annex-A certificate before the into-bond declaration is filed, and should not treat the proviso as giving six months. A licensee should sign only for goods whose storage conditions it can actually meet, cold chain included, and keep the evidence, since it is the first thing a show cause notice under Section 13(3) will seek. And both should amend their warehousing contracts to say who bears the loss when goods certified as properly stored are found unfit.

The Board was right to replace a list that was twenty seven years old. The list is the easy part; the certificate is where the disputes will be.