November 18: The government is preparing to introduce a fully-automated system to deal with Nepal’s foreign trade. The Department of Customs informed that it is in the final stage of implementing the fully automated system under its one-door policy to regulate the country’s foreign trade.

The Department of Customs is making necessary preparations to integrate 40 concerned units that are involved in Nepal’s foreign trade in accordance to the Nepal National One-Door System.

Under this system, all the stakeholders involved in import and export business will be linked to each other through online medium. The department informed that it is currently setting up legal basis for operating the new system.

Coordinator of the project implementation unit Shyam Prasad Bhandari informed New Business Age that the new system is in the final phase of implementation. According to Bhandari, the government had started developing infrastructure for the new system since last year.

Bhandari, who is also the deputy director of the Department of Customs, added that they are planning to test the new system next week (late November).

In the initial stage, the test will include the Department of Food and Quality Control, Food, Animal and Plant Quarantine Department and the Federation of Handicraft Associations of Nepal.

“Other units and stakeholders will be included in the system once we start implementing the new system,” said Bhandari.

“This new system will not only facilitate customs clearance but will also make Nepal’s foreign trade more reliable and transparent,” he added.

The Department of Customs expects the new system to be transparent as all the process will be completed through online medium and the service seekers will not have to meet the service providers. This will also help to minimize the time and cost incurred for foreign trade.

The department informed that technology development for the one-door policy is almost over. The concerned authorities have set a target to fully operate the new system from the upcoming fiscal year while the system will be upgraded in the next two years.

The testing phase was scheduled to being two months ago but was pushed back due to lack of coordination among the stakeholders amid coronavirus crisis.

The department says that the new system is focused on facilitating foreign trade, improving revenue collection and effectively implementing social security.

The department is under compulsion to reduce the red lane used for manually examining goods at customs point below 20 percent by 2021 under a new criteria set by the World Trade Organisation. This is also one of the major reasons due to which the Department of Customs is preparing to implement the one-door policy.

The one-door policy is a fully-automated platform that is applied to make the process of foreign trade paperless.