Sri Lanka Customs faces modernisation challenge amidst workers protest

Sri Lanka Customs faces the challenge of modernising its functions, overcoming age old customs being practised by employees of the department at present to earn much needed revenue for the country, the Parliamentary Committee on Publ i c Accounts ( COPA) report revealed recently.

Protests of employees of the department are now mounting against a bill for a new Customs Act, to replace one of the world’s oldest Customs Ordinance and the deployment of Finance Ministry officials to oversee the functions of custom officers.

Customs trade unions said that they will intensify their protest campaign against the draft bill and vowed to defeat it by exerting maximum pressure in the coming weeks.

Amidst these challenges, the Customs collected revenue totalling Rs. 838 billion in 2016, short of targeted Rs. 886 billion, a senior Treasury official said.

The employees’ work- torule campaign and failure to improve the ICT system have become barriers for revenues collection at customs at present.

According to the findings of the COPA, examination units of yards at customs are yet to be connected to the automated system and no network connection to the remotely located yards.

Automation is still to be made with the external agencies such as banks, shipping agencies, etc. No authority was given to issue digital signature documents/ receipts, etc.

Considering these shortcomings, the committee has suggested to change the government policy on the existing payment mode and to include such payments on custom duty through credit cards and the immediate implementation of the Air Cargo System.

The Information Communication Agency ( ICTA) has been directed to expedite the process of establishment of the National Certification Authority in order to strengthen the electronic transactions and exchange documents electronically as legally valid documents and thereby grant permission to the Customs to issue digital signature documents/receipts, etc.

The committee stressed the need of regularising the national level payment platform - implementation of an efficient homepage classification system and a valuation system to obtain correct revenue.

Emphasising the importance on MIS Management System, the committee has recommended developing the Automation System and the Risk Management System of the Customs simultaneously.