Mr S. Nataraja, President, Chennai Custom Brokers Association (CCBA), along with Secretary Mr R. N. Sekar, Senior Vice-President Mr C. B. Bujangaram, PRO Mr Anand Sairam and Mr Jayaprakash met with Ms Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, and appreciated the government of India for making changes to facilitate ease of doing business, especially in the logistics industry, says a release.
Mr Nataraja also handed over a memorandum to the Finance Minister to apprise her of the major hurdles faced by the members of the Customs broker community. After Amendment of Customs Act, the filing of documents with Customs has been made mandatory within one day and subsequently becomes applicable late filing charges beyond 24 hours. Mr Nataraja pointed out many issues like system failure and erratic functioning of ICEGATE server, causing delays in filing documents within the prescribed time.
He appealed to the Minister to make it an auto process so as to extend the waiver of such penalties automatically during system failures, etc. This makes a huge impact on Customs brokers, with revenue loss. Mr Nataraja also pointed out many other issues like abnormal tariffs on consolidation and forwarding of LCL shipments which needs to be regulated.
There was a very good response from the Finance Minister, who assured all such issues will be addressed soon, said Mr Nataraja, as per the release.
