For the last few years, the Customs and Excise Department has been piloting a Trusted Traders Program. The new system will be replacing the Voluntary Compliance Program, and is aimed at building stronger relationships with clients and customers. The TTP - as it is called - will reduce the time it takes to clear containers of goods by putting the responsibility of reporting and declaring goods on the part of those bringing them into the country. The Program officially launched today, and the Customs Department's risk management supervisor told us about the changes...
Raquel Waight - Supervisor, Risk Mgmt., Customs Dept.
"The transformation from the VCP to the TPP wasn't much of a transformation because like I said it was just a name change. The reason being, is that when you think of voluntary compliance its sounds more enforcement so we decide, let us use a more friendlier name like the trusted traders whereby traders would feel more a part of a business relationship per say with customs and themselves and like we said the trusted traders speaks for itself. When you say trusted traders then people don't have to wonder what is trusted traders because the name says it all."
"Like you said the transformation, it was a bit of an effort and sensitization to get everybody on board more with our own staff to have them to embrace the idea of having to trust the business people because the conception of customs is that we basically always think that everybody wants to do something fraudulent when it comes to customs and evading customs duty."
"Now with this program ourselves were surprised with the results of the program because we had never thought of a time when customs will be able to actually release a shipment without having any intervention or check. We would look at it like wow we can't just release that shipment without looking in because we were taught, all kinds of thing will be happening with that shipment, but we have come to that point now where we have built trust with not all importers but some importers and we can safely feel confident in releasing those shipments without having to wonder and having that confident that they will voluntary come back and disclose to us and do self-assessment on themselves in order to comply with customs regulations and we have seen a mark improvement in the amount of revenue we have collected actually in the past 2 years within the pilot program. We have collected something like quarter million dollars just by traders coming back to us and saying hey customs I did my checks and I owe you some money."
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