The Cus­toms Clerks and Cus­toms Bro­kers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CC­C­BA) has is­sued a pub­lic call for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion fol­low­ing the re­cent fail­ure of the Au­to­mat­ed Sys­tem for Cus­toms Da­ta (ASY­CU­DA), which sup­ports the coun­try’s cus­toms and trade pro­cess­ing.

On June 30, the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise for­mal­ly no­ti­fied the pub­lic that the ASY­CU­DA sys­tem had been com­pro­mised due to wa­ter dam­age at the Cus­toms House, lo­cat­ed at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza in Port of Spain. The CC­C­BA has clar­i­fied that since that time, its mem­bers have had no ac­cess to the sys­tem.

ASY­CU­DA is re­spon­si­ble for pro­cess­ing im­port and ex­port doc­u­men­ta­tion, pay­ments to cus­toms, and sup­port for oth­er gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies. It is al­so used by Cus­toms of­fi­cers across all ports and bond­ed ware­hous­es for the clear­ance and de­liv­ery of car­go.

The CC­C­BA stat­ed that the sys­tem fail­ure has se­ri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ed the work of cus­toms clerks and bro­kers, who serve as a vi­tal part of the trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion chain. The as­so­ci­a­tion ac­knowl­edged that while lim­it­ed man­u­al clear­ances are be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed, these are in­suf­fi­cient to han­dle the vol­ume and com­plex­i­ty of on­go­ing trade op­er­a­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the CC­C­BA, is­sues with the sys­tem were ev­i­dent more than a month be­fore the wa­ter leak. The as­so­ci­a­tion claimed that dur­ing that time, the sys­tem had been un­sta­ble and un­re­li­able. It fur­ther not­ed what it de­scribed as the ab­sence of a vi­able back­up sys­tem to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity dur­ing pe­ri­ods of sys­tem dis­rup­tion.

The CC­C­BA in­di­cat­ed that it is main­tain­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion as work con­tin­ues to re­solve the is­sue. The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that im­porters and ex­porters re­main con­cerned about ris­ing costs, in­clud­ing port and ware­house rent, de­mur­rage, and oth­er charges, caused by the de­lays in car­go clear­ance.

A for­mal meet­ing re­quest has been sub­mit­ted by the CC­C­BA to the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise to ad­dress the ASY­CU­DA sit­u­a­tion and ad­di­tion­al is­sues in the sec­tor. The CC­C­BA re­port­ed that it has not yet re­ceived a re­sponse.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is now pub­licly call­ing on all rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and de­ci­sion-mak­ers to meet with stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try to de­vel­op a long-term and sus­tain­able plan for sys­tem re­li­a­bil­i­ty and trade pro­tec­tion.

The CC­C­BA high­light­ed the cur­rent de­lays in trade op­er­a­tions, pay­ment pro­cess­ing, and doc­u­men­ta­tion as eco­nom­i­cal­ly harm­ful. The as­so­ci­a­tion be­lieves the dis­rup­tions are caus­ing un­nec­es­sary loss­es of time and fi­nan­cial re­sources across the in­dus­try.

The CC­C­BA is call­ing for sev­er­al im­me­di­ate ac­tions. These in­clude the pro­vi­sion of up­dates on the restora­tion of the ASY­CU­DA and TTBi­zLink sys­tems, im­ple­men­ta­tion of tem­po­rary man­u­al pro­ce­dures or al­ter­na­tive chan­nels to process de­c­la­ra­tions, co­op­er­a­tion from ports and tran­sit sheds to of­fer waivers or ex­tend free clear­ance pe­ri­ods, and ap­peals to ship­ping lines to ex­tend de­mur­rage-free days. The CC­C­BA is al­so ad­vo­cat­ing for in­vest­ment in ro­bust dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and failover sys­tems to en­sure busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity dur­ing fu­ture in­ci­dents.