Recently, to enhance the implementation of the growth stabilizing and structure adjusting policies for foreign trade development and promote trade facilitation, the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China jointly announced to expand the coverage of the program for paperless customs clearance under the automatic import licensing system from currently 10 customs districts to all the customs districts of China since February 1, 2016.

 

Paperless customs clearance is one of the major measures for stabilizing growth and adjusting structure for foreign trade development. The two policy documents on supporting stable growth of foreign trade and enhancing imports issued by the General Office of the State Council in 2014 clearly proposed to “promote paperless customs operations and faster customs clearance” and “accelerate implementation of pilot projects for paperless customs clearance of commodities under automatic import licensing management”. Since 2015, to promote the implementation of the trade facilitation measure, the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs have launched pilot projects for paperless customs clearance under the automatic import licensing system at Shanghai Customs District and other nine customs districts, including releasing usage specifications, finishing platform development, providing system guarantee and technical support for license application and issuing, organizing the license issuing organizations and local enterprises to attend specialized trainings on trial operation of digital licenses and carrying out extensive publicity activities to guarantee that the policies are put into practice as expected.

 

By the end of 2015, the whole country has issued more than 75,000 digital licenses under the automatic import licensing system, accounting for nearly 60% of the total licenses issued under the system. To enhance the evaluation of the effects of the policies, the Ministry of Commerce has carried out researches and surveys on the progress of the pilot projects and questionnaire surveys with related enterprises for several times. Generally, the license issuing organizations and related enterprises said that, compared with paper licenses, the digital licenses have promoted the restructuring of the customs clearance procedures, which has led to faster and more convenient application, more transparent license issuing and more efficient customs clearance. The feedbacks of related enterprises to the questionnaires indicated that, nearly 98% of related enterprises are satisfied with the pilot projects. Currently, the pilot projects are in stable operation, laying a good foundation for nationwide expansion.

 

At the 2016 National Import and Export Work Conference, it was proposed that, for the foreign trade development in the near future, emphasis should be laid on enhancing implementation of foreign trade policies. To accelerate trade facilitation and provide substantial support for alleviating burdens on enterprises, the Ministry of Commerce will continue to cooperate with the General Administration of Customs to stably and orderly promote the roll-out of paperless customs clearance.

 

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, February 1, 2016