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Goods for Disaster Relief

 Immediately after cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu, the Customs team has work tirelessly and consistently with NDMO to make sure disaster relief supplies are imported into the country with minimum interventions, expedite release of goods and allow fast delivery to affected communities.

Under the Part 3 of the Schedule 1 of the Import Duties Act CAP 91, the Director of NDMO is the designated authority to provide approval to any person or organization, who imports goods that met the conditions under code 290. The code 290 conditions clearly stipulate that “the goods are for disaster relief; funded by foreign states or international organizations and intended for free distribution for use in declared disaster areas”. 

However, the legal notes to Part 3 require the Director of Customs to impose additional conditions, and may disallow concession and collect duty, even after goods have left the Customs Control Area, for the protection of revenue collection. This makes it important for Customs to carry out compliance checks on all end-users of these exemptions.

The mandate of conducting checks on end-users of exemptions falls under the Customs Revenue Section. In its annual business plan of 2015, it requires Customs Revenue to undertake two end-use checks in one year on all the person(s) or organizations who may have been the beneficiary of the exemptions. This is quite an expensive exercise as most users are out in the rural areas and outer islands of Vanuatu. However, it is evident that the checks are worth the cost as there have been instances where officer intercept abuse and breaches of Customs regulations. In the cases were abuse has been intercepted, Customs has intervened and dealt with the people concern. With the experience of relief supplies for cyclone Pam, already a number of abuses were intercepted and Customs has taken steps to addresses these abuses. 

It is encouraged that all the people who received exempted disaster relief supplies from the NDMO office to use them solely for the purpose of which it was intended for, and not any other purposes. Customs will still conduct its regular compliance checks and all end-users will be monitored for a period of up to five years, after the importation of the goods.