What this means is that unlike other Pacific countries, airlines, shipping lines and freight forwarders submit their cargo manifests directly into ASYCUDA, without any Customs intervention. In addition to this, no paper manifests are submitted to Customs. Furthermore to this, unlike other Pacific countries, Customs Brokers and Importers have self assessment access in ASYCUDA, meaning they can assess their entries from the comfort of their offices 24hrs a day without any Customs intervention.
You may ask, why does Customs allow this ‘free’ access to ASYCUDA? The answer is simple, we don’t have enough resources (both human resource and financial resource), to check everything that enters and leave our borders. We therefore have to work smarter, not necessarily harder.
So how does Customs make sure that data and Government revenue are probably collected? We apply Risk Management where we put our efforts into areas where the risks are high. Sound Risk Management is possible with effective Laws and Regulations, which does not only penalize Offenders, but allow for high level of voluntary compliance and therefore releases Customs to concentrate on actual areas of risks.
In line with the above approach, the Customs Act and Regulation requires that all users who access the ASYCUDA system to submit cargo manifests or lodge Customs declarations must be registered users. Therefore, since the introduction of ASYCUDA 15 years ago, Customs will now be able to legally register these external users and therefore have a credible list of those we deal with on a daily basis. This exercise will also allow Customs to recognize and acknowledge these users for the important role they play in submitting the important data for the Government and for declaring the much needed Government revenue to be collected by Customs.
As part of this process, an MOU will be signed by each users and Customs, and each user will be awarded with a certificate certifying that they are now recognized as registered ASYCUDA users.
