A pilot programme of the Customs Brokers Licence Management System (CBLMS) has been launched in Mumbai Customs Zone, in order to make the management of Customs Brokers a completely online process.

The CBLMS aims to minimise the physical interface between Customs Brokers and the department, bring uniformity in procedures, process applications on time and bring in accountability.

There are 28 Customs Brokers’ Associations that have 6,500 Customs Broker members across India.

Rajiv Talwar, Special Secretary & Member, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, in a letter , said the establishment of a pan-India CBLMS to infuse ‘Turant’ - a CBIC initiative to facilitate ease of doing business - aims at faceless, contactless and paperless interactions to better service the Customs Brokers’ community.

The CBLMS is envisaged as a single portal, accessible to all jurisdictional commissionerates, which license Customs Brokers, for automating related work management processes of Customs Brokers and their card holders.

To start with, an initial module for creating a Customs Brokers profile has been opened at Mumbai in which 54 Customs Brokers have been onboarded with documents/ data. Talwar urged the associations to reach out to their members for quick and successful on-boarding of their profiles.

Tej Contractor, Executive Committee member of The Federation of Freight Forwarders’ Association of India said CBLMS is a move to digitalise the Customs Broker and its functioning, currently all processes are done offline. Whether it is a Customs pass or a declarationit can be submitted online. Further, it will bring about uniformity in maintaining records across the country, in addition the data is now digital, hence, it is more reliable, and remains accessible

This also gives more control to the board, to focus on the department to monitor functioning of the Customs Broker even at multiple locations, he told businessline.

Introduction of CBLMS would facilitate monitoring and have a control process in place for pan-India data availability of the Custom Brokers CBs and their credentials. This way the country would move towards a digital platform that would curtail non-serious players in the domain, said AV Vijaykumar of Paramount Shipping Services.

Started as a pilot project in Mumbai Customs, all other Customs stations have now issued public notices to complete this process before October 31, he said.

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