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23 Aug 2000

Dear Sirs, good afternoon!

We are from Brazil, our company (Citrosuco Paulista S.A.), and for several reasons we would like to introduce the EDI system.

So, we would like to know if the "Electronic Data Interchange - EDI" for shipping documents purposes (exportation) are allowed and, in which country(ies), and which documents are acceptable.

Another question: Is acceptable send attached e-mails (scanner, excel files, word files) for custom purposes?

Thank you very much for your support.

Citrosuco

Dear Citrosuco:

Unfortunately, I can't give you a list of all countries and their acceptance of EDI as a means of providing information to customs. It is best to check with your shipping firm or the embassy of each country where you want to ship your products.

I put your question to Mr. Dietmar Jost, the Senior Technical Officer, Compliance and Facilitation Directorate, World Customs Organisation (WCO) who replied:

"First of all let me agree with your assessment that such specific
questions are better directed to the local authorities in order to get more accurate and up-to-date information.

But in general, I know that Brazil is working on a new IT system, which will support the use of UN/EDIFACT. However, I have no recent information about how far they got and which exact messages they are going to use, probably CUSCAR and CUSDEC.

The global trend is definitely EDI and e-commerce. Although the majority of the more developed economies are using sophisticated EDI systems, most of them supporting the UN/EDIFACT standard, the emergence of e-commerce makes them consider other options as well like Web interfaces using XML.

The WCO through their website under www.wcoomd.org offers links to more than 70 of our 151 member Customs administrations and the number of links is growing by week. Although some of them are fairly basic, the trend is that more and more are following the WCO recommendation on the use of world wide web sites for Customs, which encourages our members to offer detailed information about their IT systems and also to offer information in at least one international language, preferably in English.

With the emergence of e-commerce, Customs is also looking at all sorts of possibilities to receive and capture information electronically. Where documents are only for reference purposes and are supporting a post-clearance check, concepts such as scanned-in invoices or alike might be a viable option, if the trader has a good compliance record.

In a number of countries Customs is accepting on a case by case basis invoices via fax transmission. I would not see any reason for rejecting the same invoice coming as an attachment to an e-mail message.

In other cases Customs is using e-forms to capture information or even voice mail systems to collect tax returns."

Good Luck,

Dr. Ecommerce