China’s ongoing customs reform benefits enterprises

China’s national customs clearance integration, part of a reform starting in July, is bringing enterprises immense convenience and satisfaction, facilitating their clearance progress and savings in trade costs.

Ever since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has been working to strike a balance between importation and exportation and introducing a wide range of optimizing policies and measures in various regards, including trade, customs, and regulation.

Being one of the largest commodity importers, China contributes one-tenth to global import shares. It’s high on the agenda of China’s government to reduce institutional transaction costs, improve trade facilitation conditions, and develop the domestic market to create a level playing field.

On Sept 4, 2015, China became the 16th member to accept the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), which came into force this February. Being the very first multilateral protocol since the establishment of WTO, TFA is due to lower global trade costs by 14.3 percent and propel the modernization of China’s ports governance system and the reduction of operation costs for enterprises.

The efficiency of clearance determines enterprises’ trade costs to a great extent. Clearance duration from January to August was shortened by 24.7 percent compared to last year, resulting from the all-around implementation of integral national customs clearance reform in July.

Consumers’ demand for quality imports is positively correlated with constantly upgrading consumption. A guideline on improving China’s pre-warning and quick response system of quality risks in import and export commodities issued by the State Council in September urged bringing openness, sharing, shared-governance, and interconnected quality governance in efforts to safeguard people’s lives and offer high-quality supplies for economic development.

“Information exchange, mutual recognition of supervision, and mutual assistance in law enforcement are simplified among customs, inspection and quarantine, maritime, immigration inspection and other departments, relieving burdens for foreign trade enterprises,” said Xie Song, chief of Guangzhou Customs.