In furtherance to the Indian Customs Single Window project, wherein online permissions are being obtained from various govt. agencies, the CBEC has developed ‘Integrated Declaration’, under which all information required for import clearance by the concerned government agencies has been incorporated in the electronic format of bill of entry. The customs broker or importer shall submit the “Integrated Declaration” electronically to a single entry point, i.e. the Customs Gateway (ICEGATE). Upon filing of the declaration, the bill of entry will automatically be referred to concerned agency, if required, based on risk. Bill of Entry (Electronic Declaration) Regulations, 2011 have also been amended in this regard.
According to Circular No. 10/2016-Cus., dated 15-3-2016, the new Integrated Declaration will include different types of undertakings, declarations, and letters of guarantee that are presently required to be submitted on company letter heads. The new declaration would gather data/information for implementation of a system of selective inspection and testing by all Partner Government Agencies, which is crucial for promoting “Ease of Doing Business”.
Further, according to Customs Instruction dated 31st March, 2016 the government has, with effect from 1-4-2016, replaced the ‘Bill of Entry’ with an “Integrated Declaration’ to be filed by the importers. Some of the key changes introduced in the bill of entry are:
- The Authorised Dealer Code of the bank that will be making outward remittance of foreign exchange in connection with the imported goods will have to be submitted by the importer.
- As per RBI guidelines, a third party payment should be made only to FATF (Financial Action Task Force) compliant country. To monitor the same, the Address field is provided to capture Country code to verify compliance to said guidelines.
- To cater for other types of INCOTERMS, such as ex-works (EXW), a new field “TERMS place” has been added.
- To allow importers to declare AEOs in the Bills of Entry, a set of fields have been added.
- A flag has been added with regard to the relationship between buyer and seller. If the importer answers ‘Y’, he has to fill-in the SVB Registration Number.
- ‘End use of the item’ was a free text field in Bill of Entry. This has been converted into a dropdown list, because, purpose of import/Intended end-use is a key data field for Participating Government Agencies.
- For receiving a proper declaration in relation to RSP applicability, the current field is modified so that the importer makes a clear declaration in respect of every item.
- In order to avail exemption of Additional duty of Customs using Customs Notification, the importer should declare the flag “C” to indicate that the declared Notification Number refers to Customs Notification and not a Central Excise one.
- Necessary changes have been introduced into the Bill of Entry format to capture Central Excise Registration Number. Similarly, the system has been made ready to capture the GSTIN number by setting the appropriate flag. This will be enabled as and when Goods & Services Tax (GST) is introduced.