The Indian Customs EDI System (ICES) is now operational at 40 major customs locations handling nearly 75% of India’s International trade in terms of import and export consignments. ICES has two aspects:
-- Internal Automation of the Custom House for a comprehensive, paperless, fully automated customs clearance system that makes the functioning of Customs clearance transparent.
-- Online, real-time electronic interface with the trade, transport and regulatory agencies concerned with customs clearance of import and export cargo.
ICES is designed to exchange/transact customs clearance electronically using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). A large number of documents that trade, transport and regulatory agencies (collectively called trading partners are required to submit/ receive in the process of live customs clearance are now being processed online.
Table: Customs EDI Trading Partners: Summary
| Sr. No. | EDI trading partner | Nature of information exchanged through EDI | No. of messages (approx.) |
1) | Importers/ Exporters/ CHA | Bills of Entry/ Shipping Bills and related messages | 13 |
2) | Airlines / Shipping Agents | Manifests and cargo logistics messages | 26 |
3) | Custodians(AAI/ Port Authorities / CONCOR) | Cargo logistics messages | AAI – 17 Port – 30 CONCOR –12 |
4) | Banks | Financial messages – duty drawbac disbursal and customs duty payment | 30 |
5) | AEPC/TEXPROCIL | Export quota information | 8 |
6) | DGFT | License, shipping bills and IE Code data | 13 |
8) | RBI | Forex. Remmittance data | 1 |
9) | DGCIS | Trade statistics | 2 |
10) | Directorate of Valuation | Valuation data | 2 |
Three Systems are major Components of Custom automation and EDI
(i) (i) The ICES running at 40 locations. ICES has to automatically receive and process all incoming messages. ICES generate all outgoing messages automatically at the appropriate stage of the clearance process.
(ii) (ii) The Message Exchange Servers (MES). These are computers installed in the custom houses alongside the ICES computers and play as intermediate stations holding incoming and out going messages.
(iii) (iii) ICEGATE & ICENET – which stand for the Indian Customs & Central Excise Gateway and Indian Customs and Central Excise Network respectively. ICENET is a network of all ICES 40 locations, CBEC, Directorate of Valuation, NIC and DGRI.
The role of the three systems( ICES, ICEGATE/ICENET and MES have been divided into 5 service areas as depicted below:
