New regulations are coming to govern how the Customs Department functions, including the implementation of new technologies and its relationship with the public.
Minister of Finance Ryan Straughn announced this recently as the state entity held an open day at the Leroy Trotman Building, Customs House, University Row, St Michael, as part of its 121st anniversary celebrations.
“We are currently reviewing some new customs regulations, and those will come on stream by October. That will be occasioned by new . . . standard operating procedures, which the Customs Department obviously will be communicating with the public as we move forward,” the minister said.
The new regulations are coming five years after Parliament passed a new Customs Act.
Straughn explained that “in 2021 . . . we kept what would have been the standing Customs Regulations at the time”.
“Also, between then and now we have introduced a few new initiatives in relation to not just the Trusted Trader programme, but also we’re going to have provision for advanced rulings and some other departments within Customs that the new legislation then would allow,” he noted.
“So we took some time just to make sure that the regulations that will support some of those new initiatives with respect to Customs that we are now really in a position to roll out.”
Straughn said that with the Customs Department’s introduction of new technology to enhance its operations and its relations with stakeholders, “then obviously the regulations need to keep pace with and support the technological interventions, but equally the new provisions within Customs, to be able to support the trading community”.
“So we are ready now to be able to move that forward, and as we onboard specific activities, then the regulators will be there to support that,” he stated.
Key to this effort will be new standard operating procedures facilitating the department’s interaction with the public.
“The public would expect that when you interface with a particular activity with Customs, that there’s a standard, and therefore there really ought to be no deviation from that standard within the process, unless something quite extraordinary has happened,” Straughn said.
“And therefore we want to make sure that not just the department but the public are certainly aware as to what those [standard operating procedures] are and what they entail, and therefore allow us to be able to do the job as efficiently as possible.”
(SC)
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