Maputo — As from Monday, clearing goods through Mozambican customs should become somewhat simpler, with the abolition of the "pre-declaration", the form that all importers were supposed to deliver to customs announcing the goods they were intending to import.
The "pre-declaration" replaced the old import licence system in December 1998. Importers objected largely because they had to make a deposit of 15 per cent of the customs duties owing, every time they made a "pre-declaration". The remaining 85 per cent was paid when the goods entered the country.
This has now been swept away, and no deposit is required.
For the goods that are subject to pre-shipment inspection, all the importer need do is submit the relevant pro-forma invoice to th inspection company, the British firm Intertek Testing Services (ITS), and request the inspection.
The great bulk of goods are no longer subject to pre- shipment inspection. In these cases, the importer submits directly to customs the "documento unico" ("single document") used for all customs purposes, importing and exporting.
The only goods still subject to pre-shipment inspection are grains, flour, sugar, vegetable oil, cement, chemical products, pigments, most medicines, dry cells, used clothes, paper, tyres, and vehicles. In the cases of grain, flour, cement, paper, used clothes and vegetable oil, if the amount imported is small (less than 100 kilos or 20 litres), it is exempt from inspection.
The maximum rate for customs duties on consumer goods has been cut from 30 to 25 per cent. Also reduced is the consumption tax on luxury goods, particularly on items used in the tourism industry. Thus the consumption tax on everything used for line fishing and for aquatic sports has been cut from 40 to 15 per cent. There is the same reduction for equipment used in several other sports, including golf and tennis.
Wine lovers should also benefit: the consumption tax on wine falls from 65 to 40 per cent. There is no such cut for whisky and other spirits, where the tax remains 65 per cent.
(It should be noted that the consumption tax is in addition to customs duties and to Value Added Tax, which remains unchanged at 17 per cent.) The Mozambican customs service has also changed the way it assess the "customs value" of goods. Previously, it used the Brussels Customs Declaration, under which duties were charged according to the market value of goods. Now it has adopted Article seven of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), under which duties are calculated according to the "transaction value" of the item.
This change means that now the invoices presented by importers will be given greater weight. If an importer presents a "credible invoice", a customs spokesman told AIM, that will be the basis on which duties are charged, even if it is below the market value of the goods.
The spokesman did not think this would necessarily open the doors to a flood of false invoices, since customs has its intelligence channels for checking the credibility or otherwise of invoices.
As for the customs tariffs book, this has been changed to bring it into line with the 2002 harmonised version of the classification of merchandise adopted by the World Customs Organisation.
