Govt sanctions Rs 599 cr for EDI

The ambitious project of electronic data interchange (EDI) system of Indian Customs seems to be set for a quantum jump with cabinet committee on economic affairs approving the long standing proposal of the central board of excise and customs (CBEC) to consolidate their information technology infrastructure.

Rs 599 crore has been sanctioned for the new project which includes setting up state-of-the-art data centre, new central server, disaster recovery site, upgrading of e-commerce portal www.icegate.gov.in and new and fast MPLS based wide area network (WAN) etc., connecting 582 locations and 1200 offices all over the country.

Yashodhan Parande, director general (system) of the CBEC said, “There will be a tremendous improvement in the EDI processing as it will bring in a sea-change in both the infrastructure and software - from the present distributive operation to a centralised environment. The current infrastructure is badly under strain and outdated.

The new system is more facilitative and the response from the trade is expected to improve.” even though the computerisation was commissioned way back in 1995, it has been said that the trade has not pitched to reap the benefits.

“Today many functions like customs examination, payment of custom duty, payment of assessment charges by Air India, etc, cannot be done on-line,” says Ajit B Sane, proprietor of Satyam Shipping Agency, a custom house agent (CHA). “I prefer the option of sending all the data on a floppy to the custom house.

This helps in the follow up required for getting bills of entry processed quickly. Even with the Risk Management System (RMS) where regular importers avail of the benefit of filing the bill of entry and get goods cleared without any customs examination my observation is that there are only 3 to 4 documents out of 10 which get processed on-line.”

“After the introduction of the RMS the total time taken for assessment and examination has reduced by nearly 50%,” informed B Bhattacharya, additional director general of the directorate of systems (customs & central excise). “However, the time taken for making the duty payment has remained the same because importers outsource the clearance work to CHAs. Importers should look to reducing their transaction cost and the dwell time thereby getting more competitive.

“Besides, there are only 194 importers considered as accredited clients of customs who are registered for the accredited clients’ programme (ACP) even though RMS and ACP schemes were introduced in December 2005 and is now operational at 21 ports/ICDs/air cargo complexes across India. When such eligible importers can enjoy the privilege of e-filing the bills of entry, e-paying the duty and clearing their goods very quickly without being subjected to assessment and examination, there should have been by now at least 3000 importers registered for the ACP. But this has not happened.”

The honorary secretary of Air Cargo Agents’ Association of India (ACAAI) and senior director of Tulsidas Khimji, Hemant Bhatia, said, “Importers would be liable to pay heavily for any discrepancy under the RMS since the onus is on the importer. Registering for this system should be commercially and strategically viable.

However, there is no delay on the part of the CHA as he is interested in putting up all the documents and necessary information requested by the query memo as quickly as possible since it is his own payment that would gets delayed. Now query memos can also be replied to on-line and all documents are scanned and forwarded on-line as well.”