The average import release time by customs authorities has declined by 20% for inland container depots (ICDs), 11% for air cargo complexes (ACCs) and 9% for seaports in 2023 over 2022, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) said in a report on Thursday.

In absolute terms, the import release time for seaports, ICDs, air cargo complexes (ACCs) and integrated check posts (ICPs) is 85.42 hours, 71.46 hours, 44.16 hours and 31.47 hours, respectively. The measure of standard deviation is found to be lower, indicating a greater certainty of the expeditious release of imported cargo.

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The measure of standard deviation is found to be lower, indicating a greater certainty of the expeditious release of imported cargo.

The CBIC has been focussing on reducing release time by customs for both imports and exports to promote ease of doing business and improve tax collections.

The CBIC released a National Time Release Study (NTRS) 2023 report, a performance measurement tool, that aims to present a quantitative measure of the cargo release time, defined as the time taken from arrival of the cargo at the customs station to its out of charge for domestic clearance in case of imports and arrival of the cargo at the customs station to the eventual departure of the carrier in case of exports.

NTRS 2023 presents port-category wise average release time for the current year, based on the sample period of January 1-7, 2023 (both days included), comparing the same to the performance during the corresponding periods of 2021 and 2022.

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Findings of NTRS 2023 reaffirm the 3-fold ‘Path to promptness’ comprising advance filing of import documents enabling pre-arrival processing, risk-based facilitation of cargo and benefits of trusted client programme – Authorised Economic Operators.

Further, in line with the high priority accorded by the government on export promotion, NTRS 2023 has placed a much greater focus on the measurement of export release time. NTRS 2023 recognises the distinction between regulatory clearance (also referred to as customs release), which gets completed with the grant of Let Export Order (LEO) and the wider aspect of physical clearance which occurs on completion of logistics processes with the departure of the carrier with the goods.