China Deepens Paperless Customs Clearance Pilot Reform

Apr. 22 – With a view to reduce administrative burdens on importers and exporters, as well as expedite customs clearance, China’s General Administrative of Customs (GAC) introduced the “Paperless Customs Clearance Pilot Reform” on August 1 last year, which allows customs declaration information to be stored and transferred through computers and other electronic media, and be automatically reviewed by customs.

The reform has greatly improved customs clearance efficiency and has reduced labor costs at the same time. Previously, all import and export enterprises had to print out and fill in various kinds of documents for every single transaction that goes though Chinese customs, which was time consuming and highly inefficient. Furthermore, the recent reform also allows GAC to improve data collection and analysis, thereby strengthening its supervision on trading information.

With the successful implementation of the pilot reform, the GAC released the “Announcement on Deepening Paperless Customs Clearance Pilot Reform (hereinafter referred to as ‘Announcement’)” on April 10, 2013, which expands the pilot scope and regulates the application procedure for the reform. Detailed information can be found below.

Expanding the Pilot Scope

Expansion of pilot enterprises

Under China’s customs system, enterprises have been divided into five categories based on their compliance records and business performance. Currently, the pilot reform only allows AA and A-rated enterprises to participate in the paperless customs clearance process. With the Announcement taking effect on May 1, 2013, the pilot scope will be expanded to cover all B rated enterprises as well.

Expansion of pilot area and business

The pilot program now only applies to certain activities in the following 12 customs districts:

• Beijing Customs
• Tianjin Customs
• Shanghai Customs
• Nanjing Customs
• Hangzhou Customs
• Ningbo Customs
• Fuzhou Customs
• Qingdao Customs
• Guangzhou Customs
• Shenzhen Customs
• Gongbei Customs
• Huangpu Customs

From May 1, the pilot reform will be expanded to cover all business spots and all pilot activities in the above-mentioned customs areas. Moreover, another 30 customs areas in the country will pick one to two business spots in their respective regions and choose certain businesses to pilot the paperless custom declaration process.

Application Procedures

In order to be included under the reform, applicants need to sign a electronic data agreement with their respective governing customs and the third-party certification authority (China E-Port data center). Once approval has been obtained from the governing customs division, the applicant can adopt the paperless customs clearance process in the pilot regions.

The goal of the reform is to replace all paper declarations with electronic ones in all customs districts across the country by 2015.

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