News
It took 2.6 hours on average to have general marine cargoes complete customs clearance （from when declarations were made to when approvals were granted for importing them）, according to the Ministry of Finance’s Custom and Tariff Bureau.
The bureau, which in March 2012 researched the time consumed for completing formalities necessary for importing shipments, said the time was 0.5 hours shorter than the last time it was researched in 2009.
General air cargoes passed customs inspections in an average of 0.3 hours, shorter by 0.1 hours.
In case that importers were qualified as the Authorized Economic Operators （AEOs）, customs clearance was completed in 0.1 hours for general oceangoing shipments and 0.0 hour for general airborne shipments, both of which were much shorter than the 2.6 hours and the 0.3 hours, respectively.
The research was conducted on March 12-18 on approximately 3,200 ocean shipments, 2,500 air consignments, 1,100 AEO shipments and 800 AEO air consignments, all of which were selected at random.
