The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Brokers yesterday said they have encountered more problems with Customs’ new electronic goods clearance system although the situation seemed to be improving.

Lance Major, in-house customs broker for the d’Albenas Agency, told Tribune Business: “This system is just running really, really slow. Sometimes it shuts you out and it goes down, and you have a whole lot of stuff to put through. That is just how it was. It was just ridiculous, but today it was back up and looks like we can get certain things done. So it was some improvement yesterday.

“It was just running extremely slow and it was taking hours to put in one entry, but it has improved today. The first part of the week straight from Tuesday, from the first working day until yesterday [Wednesday] it was terrible, but today was much better. So I don’t know what they did. They probably got it up and running better, and it may have been some glitches were there that they worked out.

“To tell you the truth we were off from last week Wednesday, Thursday. We did nothing from last week Thursday, and when we came back to work on Tuesday we found out nothing was working. But yesterday it was working fine. Yesterday it was 100 percent better.”

Kenneth Gibson, chief executive of Five Star Brokers, added: “We were just down for a couple of days. They were probably doing maintenance or something on the Click2Clear because we couldn’t get on since last week Friday. They must have done something but everything is up and running this morning. Everything is back in order now.”

The nationwide roll-out of Customs’ Electronic Single Window (ESW) platform, known as Click2Clear, has been accompanied by concerns ever since it took place last year. Numerous Customs brokers have complained about the lack of consistency with the platform, the length of time it takes to upload information and other issues they say impact the ease and speed of conducting business.

However, while acknowledging some problems, the Ministry of Finance and Customs have pushed back by arguing that the criticisms were coming from persons who failed to attend training sessions and understand Click2Clear’s functions prior to its launch.

Responding to the latest concerns, Marlon Johnson, the Ministry of Finance’s acting financial secretary, said he was unaware of any new issues and referred Tribune Business and to the Customs Comptroller. Dr Geanine Moss could not be reached for comment.