Customs — Revised guidelines for setting up of ICD/CFS/AFS - Customs - PUBLIC NOTICE NO. 45/2017-Cus.

OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER OF CUSTOMS (PREVENTIVE) 55-17-3, C-14, 2ND FLOOR, ROAD NO.2, INDUSTRIAL ESTATE, AUTONAGAR VIJAYAWADA - 520 007 C. No. VIII/09/03/2017-Cus.Tech. Date: 02.01.2018 PUBLIC NOTICE NO. 45/2017-Cus. Sub: Customs - Revised guidelines for setting up of ICD/CFS/AFS - regarding. Attention of all the Importers, Exporters, Customs Brokers, Steamer Agents, Custodians/Customs Cargo Service Providers, Trade Associations/Chamber of Commerce, Members of the RAC/PGC and the Public is invited to the guidelines on setting up of ICDs/CFSs/AFSs issued by the Board from time to time. 2. CBEC receives various proposal from developers for setting up of ICDs/CFSs/AFSs. These proposals are evaluated in the CBEC and comments based on the inputs received from field formations are forwarded to Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC) set up in the Ministry of Commerce. 3. It has been noticed that many of the above proposals received in the CBEC are not viable. The present system of receipt of application from the developer, obtaining comments from stakeholder departments and screening by IMC is in place for a longtime now besides being time consuming. Further, a systematic weakness of the present mechanism is that the developer approaches the IMC only after certain investments in land and other assets have been made already. Once having invested in the project, the developer leverages the same argument in his favour to push his project. 4. The present system called for a correction so that the scrutiny by various stakeholder departments doesn t become inconsequential in the face of the argument of already made investment. In view of this, it has been decided that before approaching the IMC, the developer would approach the CBEC for preliminary assessment of project. This assessment would have to be done by the Customs formation in whose administrative control the facility would be coming up. This scrutiny would have to be done within a month of submission of the application and would inter-alia cover issues of availability of land, title of land, issue of land use and antecedents of promoters and viability of the project. Commissionerate would forward their views to CBEC who would then forward them to IMC. 5. In addition to this, IMC has also launched an online module whereby the application from the prospective developers would be received online and forwarded to stakeholder department online. These virtual applications would be then forwarded from CBEC to respective Chief Commissioners / Commissioners for their examination. In terms of the new guidelines, preliminary comments about the viability of the project by jurisdictional Commissioner has been made mandatory before submitting the application online. 6. A copy of the revised guideline is attached. 7. Action to be taken in terms of decisions taken in this public Notice should be considered as standing order for the purpose of officers and staff. SUDHA KOKA COMMISSIONER