The General Administration of Customs of China announced on the 13th that by December 2019, the overall clearance time for imports nationwide had dropped to 36.7 hours, a decrease of 62.3% compared to 2017; The overall customs clearance time for exports has been reduced to 2.6 hours, a decrease of 78.6% compared to 2017.
This means that China has completed the target task of halving the import and export clearance time by the end of 2021 compared to 2017, two years ahead of schedule.
The declaration process for import and export enterprises has also been simplified. The customs stated that the declaration data has been streamlined from 229 items to 105 items. Except for 4 types of import and export supervision documents that require security and confidentiality, all 40 types have been declared and processed online, and online verification and automatic comparison have been achieved in the port inspection process.
In recent years, China has been striving to improve the level of trade liberalization and facilitation. In addition to reducing import and export clearance time, China has also independently lowered tariffs multiple times.
According to the "Doing Business Report" released by the World Bank, China's cross-border trade facilitation has made significant progress for two consecutive years, ranking 56th globally, surpassing Japan. The total compliance cost of China's cross-border trade exports has decreased from 568.7 US dollars in 2017 to 330 US dollars, a decrease of over 40% in two years; The total cost of import compliance has decreased from $915.9 in 2017 to $318, a decrease of over 65% in two years.
In the future, China is expected to make greater progress in promoting trade liberalization and facilitation. In addition to reducing tariffs on consumer goods such as frozen pork and avocados, as well as some advanced equipment, key components, and raw materials, China will also fully implement the remaining measures of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement before February 22 this year.