There are 17 Air Cargo Complexes at airports in India that facilitate customs clearances through 24x7 Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Despite having a 24x7 clearances system, bulk of trade clearances happens in the morning while the facilities at night is underutilized. The factors responsible for this are additional costs to be borne by trade on account of service charges by clearing agents, availability of staff of other regulatory agencies, banks etc, which are not providing 24x7 services.

Steps taken to ensure faster clearances through EDI during day time to facilitate ease of business are:

i) The Customs applications have been upgraded to quicken the processing of the electronically filed documents and also to increase the speed of message exchange with the custodians at the Air Cargo Complexes at the Airports.

ii) The information provided by Customs through the messages to the custodians at Delhi and Mumbai i.e, DIAL and MIAL respectively, are being used by them to provide various services through mobile applications to speed up the clearances.

iii) Central Board of Excise and Customs has already introduced a system of Risk Management System whereby the consignments are selectively interdicted for assessment and examination on the basis of risk involved. Majority of the consignments are facilitated. This decreases dwell time.

This was stated by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.

Electronic Data Interchange customs clearing: round the clock capacity underused; system upgrades and risk targeting aim to speed clearances. Round the clock Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) at airport Air Cargo Complexes is underutilised at night due to ancillary constraints such as service charges and non availability of complementary services; customs has upgraded electronic processing, enabled custodial mobile services through message feeds, and implemented a Risk Management System to selectively interdict consignments, thereby reducing dwell time and facilitating the majority of consignments.