TEHRAN: Comprehensive Customs System of Iran has enabled several new operations leading to an 18-spot improvement in the country’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI). On the basis of the latest LPI report released by the World Bank, Iran’s position in the global ranking has climbed from 118th in 2014 to 96th place in 2016. The progress has been made possible as a result of nine especial features of Comprehensive Customs System of Iran which reduce the need for personal appearances at customs. Some new features include intelligent output port, launching of the largest foreign trade database, transit goods monitoring system and electronic system counter system among the others. With establishment of the comprehensive system and a single window for cross-border trade, the time for bureaucratic procedures has decreased from 26 to only three days for imports and from seven days to one day for exports saving a great amount of time in foreign trade cycle.
Approximately 10 billion dollars per year will be saved only in the imports sector given that 50 billion dollars of goods are received annually through customs. As announced by the Word Bank, each day of delay in carrying out customs formalities will increase the costs associated with customs clearance by one per cent of the total value of a product. Following implementation of electronic payments and mechanized processes and necessary controls, Iran’s customs revenues experienced a 78% boost in 2014 as compared to 2013. The uplift in revenue has now reached 60 percent. Development of a consistent plan to combat smuggling and performing automated controls based on risk management measures led to a 771% upsurge in drug seizures from 2013 to 2014. The volume of discoveries climbed from 18 to 148 tons in the meantime while the figure hit 300 tons in the previous Iranian calendar year indicating a 95% rise. According to the latest report of Asia-Pacific Regional Information Liaison Office (RILO A / P), the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs made the greatest volume of discoveries related to drugs, psychedelic and a variety of industrial precursors after Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan and stood in the fourth place.
Iran has lately turned to electronic customs to help the government organize customs affairs, increase efficiency in supervision and management of border trade and combat smuggling. The Logistics Performance Index is an interactive benchmarking tool created to help countries identify the challenges and opportunities they face in their performance on trade logistics and what they can do to improve their performance. The LPI 2016 allows for comparisons across 160 countries. The LPI is based on a worldwide survey of operators on the ground (global freight forwarders and express carriers), providing feedback on the logistics “friendliness” of the countries in which they operate and those with which they trade.
