Chinese Companies Adopt E-clearance

45By Richard Zhu Chinese Companies Adopt
E-clearance C ustoms clearance is becom-ing more convenient for Chinese impor ters a nd exporters since Customs Pa-perless Reform, or e-clearance, is get-ting increasingly popular with them, according to PwC’s annual survey on managing customs and international trade in China.The survey, based on 400 com-panies registered in China in the first quarter of 2014, showed that 82% of companies currently participating in the e-clearance program, a sharp in-crease from 46% in 2013.Among the participants, 51% said that they are engaged in Pro-cessing Trade, while the remaining 49% are General Trade. Participants were from different industries in-cluding industrial products, auto-motive, chemical, technology, retail and consumer, pharmaceutical and healthcare.Among the surveyed participants, 61% are using, or plan to utilize, a single global trade service platform to facilitate their trade operations. More-over, 51% of companies are planning to upgrade their customs enterprise classification in 2014 in order to give them the opportunity to participate in pilot trade facilitation programs that are only available to highly ranked en-terprises. For imports under General Trade, 60% of companies plan to utilize Free Trade Agreements (F TA) to save customs duty costs. More than 52% of companies are using ASEAN-China FTA to achieve cost savings in daily operations. Among potential FTA ne-gotiations, a China-Japan-Korea Joint FTA was favored by 53% of compa-nies, while 21% of them would like to see the China-Korea FTA being rati-fied in the future. “Trade facilitation improves the efficiency of goods movement, reduces supply chain barriers and lowers the costs of logistics while safeguarding legitimate government regulatory objectives,” said Damon Paling, PwC China Trade and Cus-toms Partner. “In the context of China’s eco-nomic transformation, the regulators continue piloting new trade facilita-tion measures, while more than ever before, companies are proactively taking steps to legitimately reduce customs duty and supply chain costs in order to improve operating perfor-mance,” Damon added. China’s General Administra-tion of Customs (GAC) announced that it will launch customs clearance reform in Beijing and Tianjin on July 1. This will be expanded to neighbor-ing Hebei province around October and be promoted in other areas like the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta, Xinhua News Agency reported.The establishment of the Shang-hai Pilot Free Trade Zone has given further opportunities for bonded repair operation on a pilot basis. The survey found that 20% of companies plan to conduct bonded repair opera-tion in the zone. “Compared to the traditional OEM model, the global repair service encouraged by the Chinese govern-ment has high value-added, non-polluting and high-tech features. The introduction of this service will maximise companies’ capacities, meet their actual needs in the market, and encourage Chinese enterprises to move to the high-end of the value chain,” said Susan Ju, PwC China Trade and Customs Partner. “S everal pilot programs rolled out in recent years have sent clear signals to the market to encourage transformation. Enterprises also need to accelerate their transition in order to keep pace globally, create value and maintain a high level of trade compli-ance management,” Ju added.
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