General

Those who pay attention to international trade can easily find that optimizing the business environment is one of the key tasks of the customs in recent years. As the main starting point for optimizing the business environment, ensuring smooth flow has become a major event for the national customs to make great efforts to do a good job.

To ensure smooth flow, the national customs actively optimized the customs clearance process. On the one hand, the General Administration of Customs has continued to promote the reform of "two-step declaration" and "early declaration" to provide enterprises with more choices of customs declaration modes suitable for different business characteristics. In the first 11 months of 2022, the application rate of "two-step declaration" of the national customs reached 20.02%, and the application rate of "advance declaration" of international trade import and export reached 34.51% and 48.9% respectively. On the other hand, the General Administration of Customs, together with the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce, successfully implemented the pilot of online verification of import tariff quotas, and promoted the comprehensive implementation of online verification of import tariff quotas and paperless customs clearance from January 1, 2023.

To ensure smooth traffic and create a first-class port business environment, Chongqing Customs guarantees the rapid customs clearance of the first "railway fast connection" special train of China Laos railway in the new land sea channel.

It is self-evident that the optimization of customs clearance process will bring tangible benefits to enterprises. Take Chongqing Photoelectric Display Technology Co., Ltd. as an example. In September 2022, the company imported a batch of mobile phone displays from Hong Kong. Thanks to the "early declaration" and "two-step declaration" customs clearance mode implemented by Chongqing Customs, the whole process from customs declaration to approval of delivery takes less than 5 minutes after the screen arrives in Chongqing, compared with two to three days before.

Improving the efficiency of inbound and outbound logistics is another focus of the national customs to ensure smooth flow. Among them, the "railway express" mode is commendable. Chongqing Customs took the lead in realizing the application of the "railway express" mode in the China-Europe, China-Laos and China-Vietnam trains, reducing the overall operation time of the train by one to two days, saving more than 200 yuan in the cost of a single box, and reducing the cost of port operations by 30%.

The "linkage unloading" mode is also eye-catching. The supervision mode of "linkage loading and unloading" is an important measure for customs to support the development of regional integration in the Yangtze River Delta. "Linkage loading and unloading" implements overall supervision. The import and export goods of international trade are transported by barge between the two ports by water. The import and export of goods at each port can achieve one declaration, one inspection and one release. Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Hefei and other customs carried out pilot customs supervision mode of "linkage loading and unloading", with a total of 264 thousand TEUs of goods supervised in the first 11 months of 2022.

To ensure smooth flow, the national customs paid special attention to the urgent need for goods clearance by international trade enterprises. For example, 28 customs offices in Tianjin and Shanghai have deepened the pilot reform of "direct delivery at the ship's side" and "direct loading at the port of arrival" to minimize the time of goods in the port. Qingdao Customs superimposed the application of reform measures such as early machine inspection and direct delivery from the wharf, reducing the logistics cost of goods import by 600 to 1000 yuan per box, and reducing the average customs clearance time by 3 to 7 hours.

In terms of ensuring the smooth entry and exit postal routes, the national customs also introduced new measures. It is understood that Dalian, Changchun, Harbin, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou and other customs support the opening of 10 temporary mail routes to South Korea, Japan, the Americas, Russia and other places. In the first 11 months of 2022, the national customs supervised 288.076 million inbound and outbound mails (tickets).