Faceless Assessment Group - CBEC's Customs Manual 2025 - Customs

3. Faceless Assessment Group: 3.1 A Faceless Assessment Group consists of Appraisers/Superintendents and Assistant Commissioners/Deputy Commissioners for verification of assessment of any bill of entry that is assigned to this group in the Customs Automated System. Customs officer located in a particular Customs station are empowered to do the assessment of imports taking place at any other port in the country. 3.2 To promote specialisation in assessment, the Board created separate FAGs for certain commodities, from 15.07.2021. 3.3 Re-organisation of FAGs - Optimisation of workload: To further optimise the performance, Board decided to re-organise the NACs as per Annexure I of the circular 13/2023-Customs dated 31.05.2023. Due care has been taken to balance the objectives of improved and faster assessments with the efficient deployment of available manpower In particular, the endeavor has been to ensure that the reconfiguration of the FAGs does not lead to a disproportionate reduction/increase in the overall workload (i.e. BEs) presently being handled by the Zones. Since the parameters for setting up of NACs/ re-organisation are dynamic variables, Board carries out periodic reviews in consultation with NACs for further improvement in the performance of Faceless Assessment. 3.4 In alignment with the changes to NAC, Faceless Assessment Groups (FAG) for different commodities listed in the Column (2) of the table in annexure to circular 13/2023-Customs dated 31.05.2023, were identified based on the imported goods handled by these goods on basis of assessable value. This is done to further promote specialization. At present, the number of FAG s is 189 that are spread across 35 faceless assessment sites. [Refer Instruction No. 09/2020 dated 05.06.2020 and Circular No.13/2023-Customs dated 31.05.2023]