A total of 232 companies engaging in food imports and exports in Shenzhen have resumed work thanks to the support from Shenzhen Customs.
Customs clearance procedures have been simplified to enable importers and exporters complete customs clearance within one hour, saving 80 percent of the time required before.
A large-scale grain importer in Qianhai is one of the companies that have benefited from the simplified customs clearance procedures.
The company imported more than 30,000 tons of wheat from Australia in March without obtaining an approval of quarantine of imported animals and plants in advance due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The company manager surnamed Du said that his company would have suffered significant economic losses if they failed to obtain a quarantine approval from Shekou Customs before the cargo vessel arrived at the Shenzhen port.
Du called Shekou Customs hotline on the morning of March 11 and appealed for an expedited process of a quarantine approval for his company’s imported wheat. He obtained the approval the same day, which usually takes 20 days to process in the past. Du’s company managed to complete customs clearance when the goods arrived.
A fruit importer was another beneficiary of Shekou Customs’ efforts to better service the international trade industry during the epidemic.
A total of 16,000 tons of cherries imported by the fruit company from Chile had been backlogged in the Shekou port for days due to the epidemic outbreak. “High-end fruit such as imported cherries have always been popular among Shenzhen residents during the Spring Festival, but demand plummeted due to the virus,” said the fruit importer’s manager, identified as Qiu.
Qiu sought help with Shekou Customs, which worked with other government departments to ship the 16,000 tons of cherries out of the port to fruit distributors across the city.
Huizeyuan Industrial Co. Ltd., a company that exports aquatic products, obtained the Animal Health Certificate from Shenzhen Customs, which is required for the export of a batch of eels to Japan, and had the eels loaded on a cargo plane to Japan in one day.
Zou Donghui, a customs official, said he received a call from Huizeyuan’s manager March 20 appealing for expediting the company’s application for an Animal Health Certificate for the eels scheduled for the cargo flight to Japan that night.
Zou started working on Huizeyuan’s application after the phone call. He checked the company’s previous declaration records and inspected the quality of the eels to be exported using video conference.
“We also monitored the whole process of packing, sealing and loading the eels into the plane, and double checked the number on the strip seals”, said Zou, adding that all their efforts aim to provide convenience to import and export companies.
As of April 1, customs has released almost 1 million tons of food worth 10.4 billion yuan (US$1.47 billion), safeguarding the overall stability of the food industry.
粤公网安备 44030502003702号