Inspections by PNG Customs is minimal as they do not wish to “unnecessarily interfere with the movement of goods”.
PNG Customs Chief Commissioner, David Towe, outlined this during the 7th Customs-To-Business-Consultative Forum, which was hosted in Lae from March 20-21.
“Customs plays a very important role at the border and because of Customs processes and interventions, it can be a significant cost to business,” Towe explained.
“So, what we do is, we have a robust targeting and profiling system so that we only target those containers that are of high risk and of interest to Customs.
“Over 90 percent of cargoes go without Customs intervention. We apply a risk-based, intelligence-led system where we only target those containers that pose risks to revenue and security.
“It’s only less than 10 percent of containers that we target and of the 10 percent, up to 5 percent is on what we call ‘yellow lane’. So, yellow lane containers we only request for documentation and once we verify the documents, and when they are good to go, we allow the containers to be processed.”
Towe said the other 5 percent of consignments are targeted for physical inspection.
He gave the assurance that while the other 95 percent go without intervention, post-clearance auditors do documentary checks for compliance prior to the shipment’s departure.
Post-clearance audit is a structured examination of relevant data, sales contracts, physical stock and other assets of traders to measure and improve their compliance.