In October 2016, the then Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) in Australia published DIBPN 2016/35, Voluntary Disclosures under Section 243T and Section 243U Customs Act 1901 (Cth). In this notice, DIBP, now the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), highlighted their commitment to working with the industry to encourage higher levels of voluntary compliance by providing increased transparency to the regulatory trade environment.
Topics: South Pacific
A review of New Zealand’s Customs and Excise Act 1996 (“the previous Act”) commenced in 2013, to address parts of the previous Act that dated up to 100 years old. After extensive discussions with stakeholders and industry professionals, the new Customs and Excise bill was introduced in November 2016. On the 22 March 2018, it passed its third reading in Parliament and has now received Royal assent.
Why the change?
As mentioned, the previous Act was, in many respects, outdated and in need of review. The Customs and Excise Act 2018 (“the Act”) will enable the New Zealand Customs Service (“NZ Customs”) to keep up with the rapid changes in international trade, travel, security, and technology.
Topics: South Pacific
Being the first Goods Compliance Update after the conclusion of the 2016-17 financial year, there is so much information to sift through, so for this post, I have decided just to focus on some critical themes that are watch areas for the financial year 2017-18. I have chosen these areas in particular as the statistics and information are quite alarming, and therefore indicate an increased compliance focus by the Australian Border Force (“ABF”).
Time has certainly flown since I last posted about the first Goods Compliance Update for 2017 and here we are looking at the second Update from Australian Border Force (ABF) for the year. Here is a brief summary of the relevant points importers and exporters should be aware of:
Topics: South Pacific
There has been a lot of information to digest recently regarding developments in Customs and Trade Compliance in Australia.
The minutes from the first quarterly Compliance Advisory Group meeting (CAG) and Goods Compliance Updates (GCU) for 2017 were recently published, with some important issues for industry to be aware of.
Topics: South Pacific
