Paperless customs clearance for exports soon

The ICEGATE or Indian Customs Electronic Gateway is the national Customs portal of CBIC is offering e-filing services for the Bill of Entry (import goods declaration), Shipping Bills (export goods declaration), e-payment of Customs Duty, Common Signer utility for signing all the Customs Documents, to trade, cargo carriers, and other trading partners electronically. But all these are for the import side, a complete single-window process. On the export side, there is a manual process for registration, but work is going on for web-based registration of goods which will ensure that any exporter or broker need not travel to a port to submit documents to customs for commencing the process. The ICEGATE is looking to integrate the control agencies for regulatory interventions, this will further reduce the time of releasing the export consignments.

At present, about 43,542 users are registered with ICEGATE who are serving over 12.5 lakh importers/exporters.

In the FY 23 budget, it was declared that SEZ and its units will come under ICEGATE and ICES platform which means that SEZ would get the benefits that importers get. What that would mean is that SEZ units would get the same level of facilitation and benefits that normally importers get. The trade facilitation action plan has set a goal of a normal release time of 24 hrs and 12 hrs for exports via seaports and airports.