Customs declarations on web

M F Jabir

Sri Lanka Customs aims at going paperless and importers and exporters would be able to submit their customs declarations electronically, said Dr Neville Gunawardane, Director General Customs addressing the annual members – evening and fellowship of the Imports Section of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce held in Colombo

With the introduction of the latest version of its automation system ASYCUDAWorld and the full implementation of the system this objective could be a reality soon. Air cargo too would come under the purview of ASYCUDAWorld within two weeks, he said.

“This automation process has a history in Sri Lanka Customs. In 1993 we started this automation operation with the software ASYCUDA developed by UNCTAD. We got it as a grant at that time. Subsequently we migrated to the much improved version ASYCUDA ++ in 1999.Finally we have come up with the latest version ASYCUDAWorld. The main feature in this is that you can send your messages electronically through the web, a feature ASYCUDA ++ did not have.

There are so many improvements which we did not have in ASYCUDA++ particularly the manifest module.

ASYCUDAworld caters to most of our requirements including e-Payments. By now we have completed the implementation of the system in sea cargo, imports and exports including the BOI. What is left is the air cargo. Within the next 2 weeks ASYCUDAWorld would be implemented in sea as well as air cargo categories.

Importers and exporters would be able to submit their customs declarations electronically and we will process it electronically in the sense we will examine the electronic CusDec and send a message.

Then automatically importers can give instructions to the bank to make payments electronically. We will be initially working with the Bank of Ceylon and later on extending it to other banks as well. The objective and aim is to go paperless,” he said.

Gunawardane said there were allegations and complains against Customs with regard to corruption.

Similarly there were allegations with regard to delays and the unnecessary cost that incur to exporters and importers. As a result it was decided to give the highest priority to automate what ever procedures that could be automated and ensure that legitimate trade was facilitated by releasing or clearance of goods with a minimum delay and a minimum cost to importers and exporters.

These were the major objectives in going into automation or going for e-Customs.

He said when going into any process there were certain things that had to be done manually. If there were a doubt regarding the HF Code the computer could not verify it and it had to be done manually.

If the Customs suspected what was declared in the CusDec was not what is in the container it has to be checked manually.

“Apart from these manual functions, we examined where we could automate things. To see how we could do it effectively,” he said.

“When Customs talk about facilitating trade, we talk about facilitating legitimate trade. The key to trade facilitation is risk management. How you manage the risk.

For that purpose we have to identify the risk areas, mainly the importers and exporters, cargo and the commodities that create a risk, may be from the revenue point of view, may be from a restrictions and prohibitions perspective.

In this area we have been successful to a certain extent. We activated the risk management committee and ordered each and every directorate head of the division to focus on risk areas and to identify high risk areas and work accordingly.

To identify the high risk areas and make use of resources to curtail illegal trade while facilitating legal trade was emphasized. Along with that the major area that we embarked into is eCustoms,”he said.

Dr Gunawardane said that there was a decline in imports in general due to the recent fiscal policy changes adopted by the government.

He said last year the Customs Department collected Rs 460 billion. When considering revenue leakages with all the enforcement activities whether undervaluation, other forfeitures or penalties the Customs Department managed to collected Rs 3.8 billion last year.

With regard to the prevention of restricted and prohibited items and commodities very often smuggled into the country the department has been quite successful and had found several avenues that such items had been brought into the country with organized rackets and were able to curtail them to a great extent and had achieved a lot in that area, he added.