The following is excerpted from today’s edition of the “Journal of Commerce”.
Regulator and regulated would take a step closer to partnership if Customs and Border Protection adopts principles endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations at its quarterly meeting on Wednesday.
COAC members, including representatives from manufacturing, retailing and the high technology sector as well as transportation and logistics, recommended that Customs revive an importer account program that was first noted in the Modernization Act of 1993. In its new form, account-based management would help Customs achieve its strategic goals of modernizing trade processes and facilitating trade and compliance, said COAC member Bradley Shorser, director of trade compliance for Sears Holdings.
Customs has had an account management system since 1997. Importers were encouraged to develop relationships with a designated Customs officer, who acted as a single point of contact with the agency for all transaction business. The term lately has fallen out of favor with Customs, so COAC endorsed “account-based management” as the new paradigm.
Shorser said that in recent years Customs had not given account management the same kind of attention that had been given to such programs as the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. As a result, account management had not grown. There were only about 50 Customs officers, mostly assigned to the largest importers….
Shorser said account-based management should be open to importers of all sizes. The program could incorporate import safety and security programs, and reduce the amount of redundant information that importers provide. It could promote the “one face at the border” idea by encouraging participation by other government agencies.
Account-based management, with the use of the Automated Commercial Environment, also could create a paperless entry system that would also be a source of business and trade analysis for importers, Shorser said.
Shorser said that companies also could benefit from the system by making quarterly instead of monthly duty payments, but COAC members questioned what Customs would require for bonds to cover a three-month interval.
Brenda Smith, Customs’ executive director of trade policy and programs, said that account-based management could provide opportunities to change the way Customs does business with the trade.
