Streamlining of UQCs in Bills of Entry and Shipping Bills & Certain relaxations to License SBs - Customs - Trade Notice No. 18/2020

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF FINANCE, DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE CENTRAL BOARD OF INDIRECT TAXES AND CUSTOMS OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER OF CUSTOMS CUSTOM HOUSE, WILLINGDON ISLAND, COCHIN-682009 File No.GEN/EDI/ADV/2/2020-EDI -O/o COMMR-CUS-COCHIN Dated: 22.09.2020 Trade Notice No. 18/2020 Subject: Streamlining of UQCs in Bills of Entry and Shipping Bills Certain relaxations to License SBs reg. Kind attention is invited from Trade regarding changes made in ICES towards standardization of Unit Quantity Codes (UQCs) vide ICES Advisory 29/2020 and relaxation provided for License Shipping Bills filed till 30.10.2020 vide ICES Advisory 35/2020. 2. The Board had undertaken an exercise towards standardization of Unit Quantity Codes (UQCs) for purposes of export / import declarations filed on EDI. It was noted that many importers and exporters use UQCs like BGS, BTL, BOX, CTN, GGR, HPT, KPC, ODD and DRM etc. which are neither stipulated in the Customs Tariff Act nor prevalent in the normal business transactions. These nonconvertible/ inappropriate UQCs lead to a poor quality of data capture and related implications. 3. As a first measure, declaration of quantities in Statistical UQCs (SQCs) as prescribed under the Tariff Act have been made mandatory in both imports (since Feb 2019) and exports (since Feb 2020) for every item in addition to the quantities declared in the commercial units as per the invoice. The SQC declarations are being captured in the Single Window table of the Bills of Entry and Shipping Bills. 4. As provided by ICES Advisory 29/2020, with effect from 20/08/2020, in order to further improve data quality, even among the commercial UQCs declared for the items as per the invoice, only codes as mentioned in the Annexure I is being permitted in BEs/SBs. Declarations in any other UQC is not being accepted. 5. Representations were received from certain exporters on the inability to file reward Shipping Bills where the UQC of the export item in the corresponding DEEC/EPCG license was other than the prescribed standard UQCs since System has a check that the item UQC in the Shipping Bill and that in the license should be the same. DGFT was requested to amend such licenses and re-transmit electronically with standard UQCs. Vide Trade Notice 26/2020-21 dated 14.09.2020, DGFT has assured that all future licenses will be issued only in standard UQCs as per the above ICES advisory.For the licenses already issued with non-standard UQCs, they have requested for a relaxation till 30.10.2020. 6. Accordingly, changes have been made in the System to allow filing of Shipping Bills where the item UQC does not match with the UQC for that export item in the given license. However, exporters should continue declaring standard UQCs only in the item table of the Shipping Bill. In the license table, the quantity should be given as per the license UQC. 7. The above relaxation is given only for license Shipping Bills filed till 30.10.2020. MOHD. YOUSAF COMMISSIONER