Working on concept to reduce average cargo release time to 1 hr: CBIC

Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs Chairman Vivek Johri on Friday said they are committed to putting in place a concept to reduce the average release time of cargo to one hour in the future

Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) Chairman Vivek Johri on Friday said they are committed to putting in place a concept to reduce the average release time of cargo to one hour in the future.

He said that on the trade facilitation front, even though they have made very significant progress, more needs to be done.

"We are drawing up our vision for the future as CBIC, particularly, for the Amrit kal, we are committed to putting in place a Customs-one. The concept of Customs-one is that we are targeting an average release time of one hour," he said here at an event.

He said that the trade environment is changing, and a lot of challenges are there.

Citing an example, he said as many free trade agreements are coming and that, there is a need to look at ways to verify the certificate of country of origin.

He added that the government is taking a series of steps to ease processes for exports and imports.

But still, there is a lot of work to do, he said, adding the national committee on trade facilitation (NCTF) has set out an ambitious action plan for "us and where certain targets were given to us in terms of bringing down the release time of cargo".