 Hello viewers and welcome to our Customs Issues and Answers show. Today we will be speaking and enlightening you on issues in relation to the Customs and Excise Department. We know that a lot of you viewers have a lot of questions in relation to Customs and Departments so hopefully we can address that and with me I have three of our colleagues. We have Mr. Vincent Prosper who's a supervisor in the department and I have two inspectors with me Ms. Kiran Joseph and Mr. Samuel Udoxi and all three of them I am pretty sure carry a wealth of knowledge as it relates to the department and so we'll try to touch on issues and questions that you may have. Before we get into the nitty gritty of all of it maybe we can start by getting some information in relation to the department, the history and maybe Prosper, Mr. Prosper you can help us with that. Okay the customs department is a department that falls under the Ministry of Finance, Department of Finance. It is the oldest government department in St. Lucia having been commissioned over a hundred years over about a hundred years ago by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise when St. Lucia operated under the British Customs Act. That went on until 1967 when St. Lucia was granted full government. This allowed for the enactment of the Customs Act of 1967 which governed the operations of customs until it was replaced in 1990 by the Customs Act of number 23 of 1990. The customs department currently has a staff of about 250 and we are responsible for the collection of revenue in St. Lucia. When you say collection of revenue approximately what amount of revenue does the department contribute to? The customs department is responsible for the collection between 50 and 55 percent of total government revenue in St. Lucia. Okay great. Now when we hear customs we hear people think of clearance of goods, going to clear your stuff from the shed and stuff so maybe Mr. Eudoxie can you tell us maybe you can tell our viewers what steps are involved basically in the clearance of goods? The clearance of goods are very simple. It's nothing complicated that persons cannot do on their own especially when it's of a non-commissioned nature. So after receiving your documents from your shipper you would move to the if your goods have a non-commissioned nature you would move to the customs office where those goods are located and you will go there and the officers there will start examining the goods for you where you'll be paying your duties. When the goods are of a commotion nature and once your commotion nature when it goes up for sale and the value is above 600 EC dollars you now would have to get what you call a customs broker to assist you in preparing the necessary documentation to clear those goods. The customs brokers then would use our system our security system to prepare those documents for you where duties will be paid and you can get no clear goods immediately. Okay so you said 600 dollars to to declare your goods does that include all goods like 600 dollars is that the the maximum that you can use to or that you'll that's benchmarked for the clearance of goods from the shed 600? No for when goods have a non-commissioned nature if the goods have a value of 2,500 dollars or less. We allow for persons to walk into customs to have those goods examined and clear those goods on their own but once those goods pass that value that's of a non-commotion nature then you need to go and prepare get a customs broker now to prepare that declaration for you. Of these the 600 dollars we spoke about earlier this is for commercial goods so if somebody's has some commercial activity that they're doing but the goods are less than 600 EC dollars they also can proceed to the customs area when examination will be done for them and they'll be allowed to pay the duties right there and then at the customs office. Okay so aside apart from this I know that at one point everything was done through paper and now we're moving to paperless so we hear about ASECUTOR world can you give us some more information in relation to ASECUTOR and how it operates where does it come in when you're clearing your goods? The ASECUTOR system is a system that has been around customers for quite some time almost 15 to 20 years now we've had we're right now on the full version of ASECUTOR. ASECUTOR 2.0 was the first one we were using this one the it was a full interactive the officers had to enter the data manually in the system in a database and we moved from that to ASECUTOR plus plus from ASECUTOR plus plus where you have this app you have to download this app and you go to interact with customs on that basis now our new system which is full interactive which is a web base it has a web base design and everything is done on the internet where the broken now does not have to come to customs to prepare any documentation all documentation now is done at his comfort at his place where they prepare all the documentation and submit it online to customs for customs processing. Okay so what about payments if I'm at home or and I do can I make a payment online is it possible to be done through ASECUTOR world? Payments are possible through ASECUTOR world. What we have we don't have a full online payment where you could just stay and just take your credit card and pay online at customs but customs provides a facility a deposit facility where you can deposit money into an account and from that account at any time anywhere at your place when you're doing a declaration you can put in that payment if you have that if you have that deposit facility. Okay thank you. Okay so you do all of that do everything online ASECUTOR world you have your goods to clay now we come to customs and we hear okay you have to pay a certain amount of duty maybe one of you can enlighten our viewers as to how we arrive at our duties how basically how are duties calculated from the time you order your goods and duties are calculated on the customs value in addition to this value there are additional costs which the buyer may incur from the country of exportation to St. Lucia so all of this sum up the customs value there are local charges which are incurred in the country of importation or in St. Lucia those charges are not dutyable right but when calculating the duty there are four categories of charges which are applied to the value which gives you the custom duties those charges are the import duty you have the service charge the excise tax and vats however the tariff code is what determines what taxes are applicable to an item okay all right so I come to clear my goods and you'll have okay I'm just expanding um custom value for our viewers custom value actually refers to the price actually paid for the item and also includes um like you said the other charges incurred in the country of exportation for instance you may have parking documentation fees in non-transportation charges all this make up make up the value of the for custom purposes okay okay thank you and um okay so what if I come to customs and I don't have an invoice or I come to clear my goods and I don't have a price how based on what am I charged the duties or how do you arrive at a value if I if I don't have anything to present to customs well there's a what you call a valuation process and like we spoke earlier about the transaction value or the custom value of an invoice it is not always accepted there there are instances where that value may not be accepted for for for certain reasons but um when you don't have an invoice okay um Mr. Prosser remember you can hold that thought and we need to take a break right now so viewers will get back to you right after these messages oi you have realized you step on my toe well do something about it no trouble escalators you know better control your temper respect each other don't let no trouble escalators you know better control your temper a message from mission boys studio 758 acid creations and the royals and lucha police force okay welcome back viewers and before we took the break we Mr. Prosser was giving us some information on how to clear your goods when you come to customs without any value so maybe Mr. Prosser you can tell our viewers or okay many times um someone became to come to clear goods without an invoice perhaps it's an item that was sent by a family member or friend or some item that they shipped an item that they they own and they shipped and they they don't have an invoice what happens is that we implore what we call a valuation process to value those goods and there are six valuation methods okay but for the purpose of our viewers um we'll just touch on the first three okay which is um the most common ones that are used um in the event that you don't have an invoice the basic principle for valuation for custom valuation is the transaction value okay which is of course price actually pay the payable so in the absence of that the first method is to use the value of identical goods okay sold in the country of exploitation in the same country of exploitation and by the same seller okay in the absence of this then we move on to the other method which is the the value of similar goods again has to be sold in the country of exploitation shipped by the same seller but those goods have to they have to be interchangeable they have to be similar in function to the to the items being valued okay okay okay thank you okay we're talking about clearance of goods but we also have um I know that customs they function is border security so what about let's go to movement of passengers um maybe one of you can tell us about passengers when they come into the country returning nationals residents what to expect what are they baggage allowances um maybe one of you can help us with that passengers when they travel but when you talk about the allowances the allowances are all for residents you must be a resident for you to enjoy the allowance okay and you're entitled to 250 us dollars once a year and we have to always remember that that is not every time you travel you get this allowance this allowance is only available once a year to you when you travel secondly cigarettes cigars about 250 grams of tobacco of tobacco or 50 cigars or 200 cigarettes either one or the other not all three okay so anything you have more than that in your package or on your person you'll be required to pay the duties on it and then we have 250 milliliters for poofumes etc so this is what a traveler or a resident a returning resident is entitled to okay so they're entitled to the 250 us when they come in okay let me stress let me stress that you have to be 18 years or older okay to enjoy that and secondly if you are a solution national but you live overseas it doesn't apply to you okay so you want to stress this only for residents and also visitors are supposed to declare all durable items okay whether or not they're going to remain in solution or subsequent um exploitation okay now um miss joseph sometimes you know you have people come in and then they say oh they took my apples or or they see this or they see that maybe you can enlighten our viewers on the difference between prohibited goods and restricted goods and if you can give some examples of of what these goods are a prohibited item or prohibited good as an item that is formally forbidden by law outright it cannot be imported into senucia it will not be allowed an example of this is a counterfeit currency right whereas a restricted item is one that is under some form of control or limits so it would be permitted but there will be some form of control and an example a chain source explosives okay so a permit is required to import such an item okay and do you want to add anything to that well our viewers might wonder why is it that why is it that we do this okay it's it falls in one under one of our functions due to our strategic position on the on the border we perform what we call um agency functions or collaborative functions with other government departments and when these goods are um are detected friends and restricted goods customs officer would issue a detention slip and the relevant department would either inspect it in case of agricultural goods or submit the necessary import license or permits for instance like chainsaws okay yeah and to I don't know Mr. Prosper is saying also this applies also in the clearance of goods coalesced commercial or non-commercial because if your goods are prohibited then since customs is the first agency or the first point or interaction with those goods customs now find themselves being the ones to now take possession of those goods because they're prohibited under the law so when you claim your goods you need your licenses and your permits from the relevant agency before customs will allow you to take those goods and go with them okay um but before before we close I know let's let's go back to clearance of goods I know there's this issue um during the festive season Christmas season in relation to barrels and people come to customs expecting okay they come and but why are you're still charging me duty supposed to be duty free so maybe one of you can tell our viewers about the clearance of barrels during the Christmas season and whether duties are still applied or in what way are they applied well the clearance of barrels during the during the festive season is is similar to to that during the normal period and but what happens is that during the Christmas season government normally grants concessions to residents some relief of duty and barrels okay but it does not stipulate 100 duty free okay okay whereas import duty and value at the tax is normally um with service charge is always applicable and payable okay so there's always a service charge so it's not completely duty free to add to what Mr Prospect said during the Christmas season there is a limit of $1,500 or $2,500 excuse me per barrel okay per family and each family is entered into two barrels okay so also important to know that it does not include commercial goods and electronics so everything is commercial goods yeah goods have a commercial nature full duties must be paid as well as electronics okay okay viewers um thank you Mr Prospect, Ms Joseph and Mr Udoxi because we hope that you were enlightened and we were able to help you and provide some information because we know that the public you have a lot of questions so hopefully in another show we can come back on and give you some more information and you know just tell our viewers and let them know what customs is all about and that we can address some issues and also you can visit our website if you have any questions www.customs.gov.lc again you can visit our website at customs.gov.lc thank you you