National Time Release Study, 2022

12 Apr 2022

Shri Vivek Johri, Chairman, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), presented a set of Time Release Studies (TRS) conducted by the department.

Time Release Studies

TRS are essentially a performance measurement tool for assessing the cargo clearance process of the international trade, as recommended by the World Trade Organization (WTO) under the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and the World Customs Organization (WCO).
It adopts average cargo release time, i.e. the time taken from the arrival of the cargo at the customs station to its eventual release for import or export, as the case may be.

About the Study

The National Time Release Study (NTRS) 2022 covered 15 major Customs formations, including four port categories - seaports, air cargo complexes (ACCs), inland container depot (ICDs) and integrated check posts (ICPs), which handle about 80 percent of the bills of entry (imports documents) and 70 percent of the shipping bills (export documents) and is based on the sample period between 1st – 7th January 2022.

Findings

The NTRS 2022 has reported further improvement in the average cargo release time for all the four port categories in 2022 over corresponding period of the previous year by 2 percent for ICPs to significantly higher 16 percent for ACCs.
For the sea cargo cleared through the sea port or inland container depots average release time has improved by 12 percent. With this improvement, the ICPs have achieved the National Trade Facilitation Action Plan (NTFAP) target release time to be achieved by 2023, whereas the other three port categories have reached 75 percent of NTFAP target.

Exports

In case of Exports, the Study noted that the documentary clearance of export consignments, measured by the time taken from arrival of the goods at the customs station to grant of Let Export Order has been significantly minimized, ranging from 4:04 hours in the case of ACCs to 47:41 hours in the case of ICDs. This time is within the differential NTFAP target for the four port categories.
However, the studies have found that on account of various logistics processes, the time taken in the eventual export after the regulatory clearance, takes long time – accounting from 60 percent of the total time in the case of integrated check post to 92 percent in the case of air cargo.

National Trade Facilitation Action Plan (NTFAP)

Trade facilitation is a key enabler of a country’s economic development and national competitiveness. In the Indian context, trade facilitation has been a longstanding priority of the Government of India which has sought to proactively improve its business regulatory climate as part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative. India ratified the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement in April 2016, which subsequently came into force on 22nd February 2017.
Formulation of the National Trade Facilitation Action Plan 2017-2020 was an early measure by the Government of India to be an active facilitator of trade. The NTFAP was envisioned to be a live document which contained 96 specific measures assigned to stakeholders with indicative timelines for implementation.

Vision

To transform the cross-border clearance ecosystem through efficient, transparent, risk based, coordinated, digital, seamless and technology driven procedures which are supported by state-of-the-art seaports, airports, land border crossings, rail, road and other logistics infrastructure.

Goal

To bring down the overall cargo release time:

For Imports: Within 48 hours for Sea Cargo, Inland Container Depots and Land Customs Stations and 24 hours for Air Cargo.
For Exports: Within 24 hours for Sea Cargo, Inland Container Depots and Land Customs Stations and 12 hours for Air Cargo.

Objectives

Improve India’s ranking on the Trading Across Borders indicator of the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking under 50.
Reduction in cargo release time.
Enable paperless regulatory environment.
Establish transparent and predictable legal regime.
Improved investment climate through better infrastructure.