Zibo Customs – based in the city of Zibo, in East China's Shandong province – on Aug 9 released 17 measures to boost growth in high-quality foreign trade.
The initiative included measures to solve difficulties and remove various bottlenecks for the enterprises involved in foreign trade.
Zibo Customs plans to accelerate the customs clearance process for businesses and to encourage them to help reduce the customs clearance times by providing clear and straightforward information. Efforts will be made to optimize its services, improve the efficiency of port transportation and promote the development of Shandong as a province with dry, land ports – on top of its coastal ports – to create an integrated logistics hub. Dry ports are terminals where cargo brought over on ships is transhipped for distribution elsewhere.
The city's customs office will also promote the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP, one of the biggest trading blocs in the world, which came into force earlier this year. Its members include China and Asia-Pacific nations and it is in the process of reducing or entirely eliminating tariffs between them.
This move by the customs office will include promoting the use of intelligent audits of RCEP certificates of origin – a kind of product passport for imports and exports – and self-service printing and mutual recognition of the results from origin investigations between customs and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, or CCPIT.
RCEP member states have always been important trading partners of Zibo. In the first half of the year, the city's imports and exports to them hit 19.19 billion yuan ($2.88 billion), up 33 percent year-on-year, accounting for 34.4 percent of the total value of its foreign trade. That gain was 7.8 percentage points higher than that of last year.
To reduce costs and boost the competitiveness of key industries, Zibo Customs will expeditiously engage with key investment projects and help guide enterprises on how to get reduced tariffs. Plans are for Zibo to promote a new mode of tax administration, develop new growth engines for foreign trade and deepen the reform of its product classification system.
In addition, Zibo Customs will provide on-site and online training for Zibo-based enterprises to help them obtain Authorized Economic Operator, or AEO certification. Certificated enterprises enjoy more convenient customs clearances and a number of other perks.
In terms of services, Zibo Customs is encouraging local businesses to use electronic payments methods and is pushing forwards its one-stop service to optimize the business handling process and solve practical difficulties.
Zibo Customs is busy making changes. It issued a total of 2,062 RCEP certificates of origin in the first half of 2022. [Photo/zbnews.net]
