The transitional provisions of the SCMTR in India has been extended from 30 June, 2024 to 31 August, 2024, and SCMTR seeks to bring about transparency, predictability of movement, and advance collection of information for expeditious Customs clearance. The regulations stipulate the obligations, the roles and responsibilities, for the various stakeholders involved in the movement of imported/exported goods. The regulations also specify the changes to the formats and timelines for filing the manifest declarations.
As the transitional provision under Regulation 15 (2), the old formats have continued to be accepted, thereby giving sufficient time for complying with the new formats in a phased manner.
With the deadline of 30 June, Directorate General of Systems (DGoS) has been interacting with all the stakeholders and extensively testing the formats as per the SCMTR Regulations. More than 15 major changes have been carried out in the application based on the feedback and the ICEGATE 2.0 module development is also complete and is receiving the test files in the new format. It is further noted that, few stakeholders have shown readiness and are filing in the new format, while many others 450/58/2015 Cus.IV(Pt.I)I/91935/2024 are yet to start testing in the new format, thereby creating the doubt regarding the readiness to move completely into the new format since 1 July 2024.
On reviewing the status of readiness of the stakeholders by the Board, it has been decided to provide an extension for filing under the old format, as a final preparatory phase for migration into the new system from 31 August 2024 onwards. Therefore, the stakeholders are advised to start filing in the new format on a parallel basis on priority, as failure of the same may negatively impact the cargo clearance times for those consignments. (Continued)
