The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

and YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporters

A BISX-listed food retail group has revealed it pleaded with Customs to introduce its new electronic platform in January "to make the transition a little easier", but its arguments were not listened to.

Gavin Watchorn, AML Foods' president and chief executive, told Tribune Business it had "expressed that concern" that it would be better for the Electronic Single Window (ESW) to be implemented in the New Year once import volumes were less following the stocking-up for Christmas.

Revealing the the online portal's launch had been "quite challenging", Mr Watchorn said AML Foods' experience had become "much better" in recent weeks as he praised Customs for working with the company to address any issues.

"I do wish they would have implemented it in January," the AML Foods chief revealed. "We had requested it be implemented in January as there would be a lot less volume of imports coming into the country then, and that may have made the transition a little easier.

"We had expressed that concern. It is what it is. We had some impact at the beginning as both sides worked their way through the initial challenges. The initial weeks were quite challenging but it has got much better as we've gone along. We need to continue to do whatever training needs to happen, training and retraining, so we iron out whatever kinks are involved with it.

"Having said all that, if this is a system that drives improvements and reduces opportunities for revenue leakage we will welcome that. As with most systems there's a learning curve."

Meanwhile, brokers yesterday refuted suggestions by Customs and the Ministry of Finance that their failure to attend training sessions on how to use the new system was a major factor behind the early difficulties.

Lance Major, in-house broker for the D'Albenas Agency, said: "The whole project dropped on us in a 'dead hurry'. It took us some time to figure out what it was all about. It was very, very complicated when I first started, but now I'm accustomed to it and everything is working fine.

"I have been to lots of training, but the training really was basically to tell you the red dots and so on and so forth. It didn't tell you what to put into it. It was really a whole different set up, and different from the eCAS (Electronic Customs Automated Services) used previously. But I'm familiar with the system now and it is working quite well."

Kenneth Gibson, chief executive of Five Star Brokers, said: "The issue isn't really related to training. The issue stems from the Customs department and their processing times. It seems like they have deficiencies in their department where it takes a while for certain items to get processed in a timely fashion.

"That has nothing to do with me. Either they don't have enough people or their people don't know what to do. Some entries it is taking us two weeks to get them released from their system; that isn't a training issue to me.

"All of my people in my establishment took advantage of the training. So you can't be signalling us out," Mr Gibson continued. "I wanted to clarify that issues we had were with the Customs department's processing time. We put the items into the system and it is taking them two weeks to process it. What does that have to do with training? That is the specific and particular issue we are facing.

"With the old system it would take less than an hour. The same things that used to take less than an hour, it now takes up to two weeks. They are getting better with time but still not where it needs to be because it seems as if they need to have more people put into the area.

"We process a lot of concessions. So clients like the hotels, they don't pay any duty. So when you have an entry in for them, it goes to a special area and not a generalized area and that's taking long."

An in-house broker for a major retailer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "I think that what happened in this particular case is that this ESW had been touted initially as an ease of doing business feature; we will make trade between borders easier and what not.

"That is what the Government is getting the blowback for now, because that was featured as the main purpose of the ESW, but the main purpose is now it is about protecting the Government revenue and making it more difficult for people to evade the Government through fraudulent means - even in the case of collusion between brokers or importers and Customs officers."

They also signalled the possibility of an increase in customs brokerage fees due the extra compliance costs with the system, and said: "On the broker side it is more time consuming and it is a lot more detailed, and therefore it is causing the price of brokerage services to go up, which in turn is an added cost to importers.

"But bear in mind that there are some good features about it. With the old system we as brokers had 'free reign' in the Customs eCAS system. For example, you can put in a document today, go back tomorrow and take the document out and put something else in. That should not have been allowed. You should not have been allowed to run free in the system, but with this system they have put some restrictions in. You can't do as you would like in this new system."