The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business

Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

CONFUSION last night surrounded Customs’ efforts to restore its electronic import clearance system, which has been offline for the past week, even though a senior officer said: “We are almost there.”

James Albury, senior Customs officer with responsibility for information technology (IT), told Tribune Business that the agency was waiting on the “all clear” from the Electronic Single Window’s (ESW) data centre provider before it can re-open a system whose failure has stalled The Bahamas’ import economy.

“We are waiting on our data centre to give us the all-clear and we are almost there,” Mr Albury said. However, representatives from Cloud Carib, the Bahamas-based cloud and managed services provider, last night said the company had received no such “all-clear” request from Customs and sought to disassociate it from the situation involving the ESW portal, also known as Click2Clear.

Click2Clear has been dysfunctional for the past week with Customs brokers claiming their entries are being rejected by the system when they attempt to submit. Brokers yesterday said that they are focusing on other parts of their business rather than goods clearance until they are notified that the problems have been corrected.

David Humes, owner/ operator of Integral Logistics, said: “I didn’t even bother with Click2Clear all yesterday, but what I had to do I did over the weekend.”

Kenneth Gibson, chief executive of Five Star Brokers, added: “I didn’t even check for Click2Clear today. I was up and about and didn’t have any plans to deal with it today.

“But, after they have dealt with their data centre, will the problem be fixed? Click2Clear working properly afterwards will be the issue. I just don’t know how this is going to be after they have fixed this because they have been trying to fix this for a while now, but I am cautiously optimistic.”

Evenings after 6pm is said to currently be the “best time” to use Click2Clear because there are little to no delays or service freezes. Controversy has surrounded the Click2Clear system in recent months as a result of Ministry of Finance efforts to mandate that all brokers and importers electronically “integrate” with the system, which requires that they acquire the necessary software to do so from third-party providers.

Brokers have complained that this has imposed an unnecessary cost, time and forced them to consume extra resources in complying with this demand. But the Ministry of Finance is arguing that such “integration” is vital to eliminating more than $50m in annual revenue losses. It added that too many persons were submitting erroneous entries via Click2Clear and, in so doing, were costing the Public Treasury significant revenue.

“The Click2Clear system is designed to facilitate electronic data interchange or EDI,” the Ministry of Finance said in a previous statement. “EDI or the sending of an electronic file for processing dramatically lowers the cost of operation for both the broker and Customs. As of June 2022, less than 10 percent of the transactions submitted to Click2Clear were by EDI.

“Instead, they were submitted by way of the user interface (UI). A UI entry is a time consuming and error prone way of submitting entries. Independent estimates have placed the potential annual revenue loss from errors in submitting entries by UI at more than $50m.

“The most recent estimate was provided by a consultant firm engaged by the previous administration, so the need to improve Customs processes to eliminate leakage is non-political and has bipartisan support. The Government must act to recover this lost revenue, and recovering this revenue loss by administrative means, in a high inflation environment, is more practical than simply just increasing import duty rates.”

Suggesting that EDI “integration” will also produce greater efficiencies and reduce the cost associated with clearing imports, the Ministry of Finance said: “EDI submissions, while reducing revenue losing errors, are also quicker, which means that the importer can get his goods released by Customs much faster. A submission, which can take days to prepare under UI, can be done in hours through EDI.

“This is why Bahamian software vendors have been building EDI systems for Customs brokers and importers for a number of years prior to the full automation of the Customs processes. Many of these systems are now so sophisticated that no manual intervention is required for the import clearance process with invoices being submitted into the company or broker’s EDI electronically.

“As part of this transition, the Ministry of Finance previously advised the broker and import community that it would be making available free two different versions of an EDI system. A version for licensed brokers, which is now being rolled out, and a simplified version which would focus on commonly imported consumer goods, which is designed for persons who seek to do their own customs entries.”