Customs hope for more from less with inspections cut back

Rarely does a week go by without a major Customs and Border Protection Service operation that busts open otherwise secret import activities often related to organised crime based on drug and weapons importation.
Some of the goods will inevitably slip through, a regular reminder that much is still to be improved despite a double-strike approach to its implementation that has seen some cargo targeted specifically and other freight inspected randomly. Some criminals just get unlucky.
Others already have a reputation big enough for Customs to see their cargo coming long before the ship arrives in Australian waters.
But Australia’s import industry has paid for the privilege of seeing the successes and inherent failures first-hand, both in direct costs and in lost productivity.
After considerable lobbying, the system is set for an overhaul.
At a time when it expects air and sea cargo volumes to decline, Customs and Border Protection last week revealed it planned to cut, not increase, the amount of freight it inspected in 2009/10.
Customs calls it a “refined approach” to its inspection methods, signalling a noticeable shift away from the random approach that had ruffled feathers among already unsettled importers faced with a daily struggle to retrieve import boxes from the wharf without incurring storage fees.
Notice of a random inspection at one of Customs’ Container Examination Facilities has generally been seen as an inevitable but necessary nuisance – a process that stalls an already sluggish procedure to clear the cargo from the terminal.
From July 1, Customs intends to re-focus its efforts on cargo that it deems high-risk; usually because it has identified that the sender or receiver has a track record of not meeting requirements or having some connection with known offenders.
The new strategy has been welcomed by Australia’s import industry which has long called for an approach which uncovers more illegal activity without slowing the flow of the rest of the nation’s cargo.
The change will see the number of air cargo inspections fall by 75% to 1.5m consignments. Similarly, sea cargo inspections will drop 32,500 teu to 101,500 teu a year, down 25%.
Customs expects less import declarations to be filed in the 2009/10 financial year, but export declarations and cargo inspections are likely to remain the same.
Customs will carry out almost 300 audits of import companies and almost 40 audits on export companies next year.
The Customs Brokers and Forwarders Council of Australia welcomed the decision to move towards an intelligence-based approach rather than one focused on the number of inspections.