With ef­fect from Ju­ly 1, the Trade Li­cence Unit (TLU) of the Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (MTI­IC) will on­ly ac­cept elec­tron­ic ap­pli­ca­tions via TTBi­zLink (www.ttbi­zlink.gov.tt) for im­port/ex­port li­cences if the to­tal con­sign­ment/cus­toms val­ue is more than $20,000.A no­tice from the min­istry yes­ter­day said this is in keep­ing with Gov­ern­ment's ob­jec­tive to en­hance the trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion en­vi­ron­ment by re­duc­ing the steps in the cus­toms clear­ance process.

The no­tice states: "Any im­porter/ex­porter seek­ing to clear goods which re­quire an im­port/ex­port li­cence from the Trade Li­cence Unit of the MTI­IC with a con­sign­ment val­ue in ex­cess of shall there­fore on­ly be able to utilise an elec­tron­ic li­cence in or­der to com­plete an e-C82 Cus­toms De­c­la­ra­tion in the Cus­toms Bor­der Con­trol Sys­tem (ASY­CU­DA) op­er­at­ed by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

"Per­sons cur­rent­ly hold­ing im­port/ex­port li­cences with the above con­sign­ment val­ue, which were not gen­er­at­ed elec­tron­i­cal­ly through TTBi­zLink will not be able to use same to com­plete an e-C82 Cus­toms De­c­la­ra­tion af­ter Mon­day 30 June, 2014. These per­sons are re­quired to reap­ply us­ing TTBi­zlink."More in­for­ma­tion is avail­able at www.ttbi­zlink.gov.tt, or call 800-4739.