The up­grad­ed sys­tem now be­ing utilised by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion will im­prove this coun­try’s ease of do­ing busi­ness, the Min­istry of Fi­nance has stat­ed.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the Fi­nance Min­istry an­nounced that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion has up­grad­ed to ASY­CU­DA World 4.2.2.

ASY­CU­DA is a com­put­erised cus­toms man­age­ment sys­tem de­vel­oped in Gene­va by the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­fer­ence on Trade and De­vel­op­ment (UNC­TAD) which cov­ers most for­eign trade pro­ce­dures.

The up­grad­ed ASY­CU­DA World 4.2.2. in­tro­duces “many new fea­tures that are geared to­wards im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of ser­vice of­fered by the Di­vi­sion whilst at the same time en­forc­ing the nec­es­sary Cus­toms con­trols that en­sure con­sis­tent qual­i­ty da­ta is sub­mit­ted by traders”, the Fi­nance Min­istry stat­ed.

“The new fea­tures are geared at im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness, pro­mot­ing ac­cu­rate fee cal­cu­la­tions and en­abling gran­u­lar da­ta col­lec­tion for all stake­hold­ers through en­hanced digi­ti­sa­tion,” it stat­ed.

The sys­tem did not get off to the best of start how­ev­er as over the past two weeks var­i­ous stake­hold­ers have raised con­cerns about de­lays in pro­cess­ing Cus­toms en­tries be­cause of the up­grade which came in­to ef­fect with the new year.

While speak­ing in the Sen­ate on Tues­day Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ac­knowl­edged the is­sues and as­sured those teething prob­lems would be ad­dressed.

On Thurs­day the Port of Port-of- Spain wrote let­ters to the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of T&T as well as the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion stat­ing that it was will­ing to waive the rent be­ing in­curred to com­pa­nies who were un­able to clear ship­ments.

AM­CHAM said it was pleased with this ges­ture.

Some of the new fea­tures users will ex­pe­ri­ence are:

Elec­tron­ic Agent Re­lease –This ben­e­fits agents by cut­ting down on time de­lays. Cus­toms bro­kers can now in­put da­ta phys­i­cal­ly and get re­al-time in­for­ma­tion.

Freight Seg­ment – This fea­ture will al­low for cor­rect in­voic­ing and ac­cu­rate charges.

Car­go Amend - This new elec­tron­ic fea­ture al­lows the agent to elec­tron­i­cal­ly re­quest amend­ment of the car­go and up­load sup­port­ing doc­u­ments. Cus­toms can then ex­am­ine the re­quest made and doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted and make au­tho­rised changes.

Re-route to Query – This ben­e­fits the de­clar­er/im­porter. The orig­i­nal­ly sub­mit­ted de­c­la­ra­tion can now be amend­ed and the sys­tem will show and ver­i­fy the changes.

Ware­house Trans­fers – This fea­ture serves the needs of im­porters and keeps a prop­er in­ven­to­ry of the draw down of stock from ware­hous­es.

Ve­hi­cle Page - This fea­ture al­lows Cus­toms to col­lect ve­hi­cle in­for­ma­tion such as chas­sis and en­gine num­ber at the man­i­fest lev­el. It ben­e­fits the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion, cus­toms bro­kers and cus­to­di­ans.

Im­proved Ware­house In­ven­to­ry Man­age­ment - In­tra-re­gion­al traders will ex­pe­ri­ence greater com­pat­i­bil­i­ty be­tween the CARI­COM IM­PACS Ad­vance Car­go In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (ACIS) and ASY­CU­DA 4.2.2.

“The Min­istry of Fi­nance re­mains com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing the Cus­toms and Ex­cise ex­pe­ri­ence for the ben­e­fit of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” it stat­ed.