Innovation cutting costs in China’s top port city
Shenzhen Customs has taken innovative measures to lower costs for import and export companies.
It has launched experimental pilots to diversify the channels for customs guarantees and lower the financing and tax costs for companies as a result, according to Shenzhen Customs, which oversees the customs offices in both Shenzhen and neighboring city Huizhou.
On Oct 13, it received the first customs guarantee of 30 million yuan ($4.3 million) from the financial arm of TCL Group, a Huizhou-based business conglomerate focused on smart product manufacture and internet application services, to render the guarantee for one of its subsidiaries in home appliance production.
Normally, the import and export companies could get the customs guarantee from a bank with deposit or cash guarantee, so that they could pass the clearance before paying the taxes, which usually cost a significant amount of money and time.
“The new move to allow financial companies to issue customs guarantees can lower the costs and greatly improve the efficiency over banks, which usually take two to three weeks,” said Li Jian, general manager of TCL’s financial company.
It is expected to save at least 10 million yuan for TCL annually, which recorded more than 110 billion yuan of revenue in 2017, of which overseas business contributed nearly half, Li said.
Additionally, alongside this latest innovative measure in customs guarantees, Shenzhen Customs also allows authorized insurance companies to issue guarantees to import and export companies.
In a bid to further lower the costs for such companies, Shenzhen Customs provides direct and free services so that companies need not pay commissions to agents.
Yunnan Dimai Technology Development Co contacted Shenzhen Customs in July to inquire whether it was legal for an agent to charge for resolving a clearance verification problem.
After coordinating relevant departments to solve the problem for the high-tech company in line with internal regulations, the customs officials also explained the procedure to the company.
“Shenzhen Customs has been very helpful. It’s really important that companies can have direct communication with customs so that the intermediaries aren’t able to unreasonably over -charge them,” said Lu Hongmei, general manager of the company.
Starting from this April, customs bodies around the country took over inspection and quarantine under a national arrangement.
Shenzhen Customs quickly merged inspection and quarantine into cargo clearance at the border checkpoints, thereby reducing the number of steps in their procedures from 12 to seven, increasing efficiency by 30 percent.