Indian Custom Clearance Progressing Towards a Digital Age

According to the World Trade Organisation, the world's focus currently is to secure cross-border trade via technology like Big data, Artificial intelligence, data analytics, machine learning, and blockchain. Aligned with the world’s best practices, the Indian government is focusing on making customs clearance automated and digitalized.

To give you a brief, the Indian Government leverages the customs office to control tax and flow of goods across the country. Traditional customs clearance involves complex paperwork, potential bottlenecks, and lengthy processes. Imports and Export customs clearance in Mumbai is attributed to bureaucracy and inefficiency of documentation and manual procedures, respectively. It’s an area that is ripe for technological innovation.

Enterprises that heavily depend on International shipping can comprehend the significance of this dynamic challenge. Trade and geopolitical agreements, different rules and regulations of different countries, and ever-changing procedures; there is an unending list of challenges that industries face during customs clearance.

Digitization is a crucial step for customs clearance. While many countries are already ahead, India still strives to achieve this change. Let’s discuss how digitization aids Shippers and customs clearance to work together towards a bigger picture.
 

Benefits of Digitizing Customs Clearance

1. Embrace Digitization
   
   Digitization has helped customs clearance to optimize task efficiency, for example, leveraging scanners to get access to digital paperwork instead of depending on handling paper manually, bureaucratic details like quality inspection, forwarding multiple paper checks, etc when done digitally are less time-consuming. Constant use of AI and IoT tools can aid in tracking shipments along with freight forwarding costs and regulatio
   
   Digitization will ensure real-time tracking of freight costs in the customs clearance system for the customers as well as the department. Tracking of shipments and automated profiling of customer details will become seamless for the sectors. It will certainly optimize operations’ efficiency by 50% for imports and exports customs clearance in Mumbai.
    
2. Adopt Automatio
   
   Customs clearance in every country adheres to different rules and regulations, therefore, every importer and exporter requires a compliance certificate to ascertain that the goods shipped have adhered to the country's standards. Moreover, for certain consignments, companies must notify the customs office prior
   
   All this done manually makes everything harder and more cumbersome for the importers, exporters, and customs officers. To reduce this effort, the Indian customs clearance industry has adopted automation. For example, robots can simply separate non-restricted goods from restricted goods and high-value shipments from low-value shipments, making it simpler for customs officers. It is still something that the government is working on to make the process streamlined and simpler
   
   Besides, robotic process automation (RPA) can be leveraged to fulfill customs work like automatically updating invoices, delivery addresses, filling in detailed information about exporters and importers, shipment value, etc.
    
3. Embrace Artificial Intelligenc
   
   Customs clearance offices globally are adopting artificial intelligence to streamline processes. The Indian administration department faces the challenge of segregating shipments into different categories which makes their work strenuous to start with. Therefore, the Indian customs clearance sector is working to leverage AI to develop robust solutions to identify high-risk and low-risk shipments prior to their entry at the border. These systems, in the future, can leverage customer matching procedures, analyze shippers, curate customer profiles, and harmonize codes to link and match the shipment to the shipper
   
   Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged to make data-driven decisions by facilitating configurable business rules, alerts, notifications, risk indicators, etc.

Perspective for a Digitized Future for Customs

Beyond a doubt, the Indian customs clearance sector has progressed towards a digitalized future with machine learning and robotics and now it is moving towards embracing Artificial intelligence to aid shippers in getting a much more accurate and improved perspective.

The shippers can access key metrics by using the data captured and segregated by the system. AI and automation will facilitate a more modernized and systematic clearance process online helping shippers to develop a strategic plan for their future business endeavors.