CHINA CUSTOMS

China Customs Clarifies Requirements for Inbound/Outbound Transport and Manifest

Friday, October 31, 2014

Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg Trade Report

The General Administration of Customs of China has issued an announcement that clarifies the procedures it uses to supervise inbound and outbound cargo transportation and manifests. According to Harry Zhang, vice president of China customs consulting and compliance for Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg Ltd., this announcement includes more detailed requirements that took effect Oct. 15 and is designed to standardize across China the work of local customs offices and companies concerning two previous GACC orders (172 and 196) on this issue with respect to document requests, data management, deadlines, etc.
Highlights of the announcement include the following.
- Electronic manifest data for inbound and outbound shipments and the goods carried therein must be accurately transmitted to GACC within the prescribed time limit and in accordance with relevant filing specifications.
- Data errors in such transmissions may be corrected before the deadline for transmitting the original manifest unless the owner of the goods has completed customs declaration formalities.
- Paper or electronic versions of the overall or separate bills of lading must be prepared before an import or export shipment and all electronic data (including for separate bills of lading) must be transmitted to GACC within the specified time limit. If there are no separate bills, the information for all goods must be provided under an overall bill of lading through the manifest management system's “commodity description” data entry and then transmitted to GACC.
- Customs declarers must ensure that each declaration form has one corresponding bill of lading. When one batch of goods cannot be cleared in one declaration form, the declarer may apply to the onsite customs unit to split the overall bill of lading.
- When exporting non-containerized goods based on a weight certificate, the goods handler must transmit the electronic data handling report to GACC based on the weight certificates issued by state-authorized inspection agencies.
- The manifest transmitter must transmit electronic data regarding the allocation of empty inbound and outbound containers. When the empty containers are not actually loaded or unloaded as per the transmitted data, the transmitter must alter the electronic data with GACC.
- When a registered company needs to revise its registration information it must submit the Registration Alteration Sheet within 10 working days of the associated change.
- When a company fails to transmit electronic data for vehicles and manifests GACC will impose a penalty on it in accordance with the China Customs Regulations on Administrative Penalty.
- GACC will conduct field inspections of inbound and outbound vehicles and the goods carried therein and the companies involved must cooperate with those inspections.
- Data may be transmitted through the China E-Port platform.