Cairo – The Egyptian Customs Authority will study the proposal of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) to implement its digital customs system. The plan was presented to the Egyptian Customs Authority chairman El-Shahhat Ghattori by the regional director and head of the ABCC office in Egypt, Michael Gamal, earlier this week (pictured).
“The Egyptian Customs Authority works constantly to facilitate trade with all countries, particularly Brazil, which shares strong commercial and economic ties with us. We import several products like meat, maize, soybeans and sugar from Brazil, and we export chemicals, fertilizers, foodstuffs, and agricultural goods to them,” Ghattori said.
He added that the Egyptian Customs Authority is going through its largest technical revolution so far under the administration of the country’s president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who adopted a national customs innovation project based on the modernization of the legal framework.
According to Ghattori, the new customs law was passed in 2020, which provided the adequate use of advanced technologies, adoption of international experiences focused on the implementation of a single-window system, as well as the migration from physical to digital documents, thus simplifying customs operations, cutting trade costs, boosting international trade, and reducing the customs clearance time.
Ghattori praised the initiative of the ABCC and expressed his interest in establishing a partnership with the organization. In this respect, he asked for the competent agency to carry out a study on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed project, as well as recommending the consideration of the Jordanian experience. They agreed to hold future meetings between technicians from both sides.
The ABCC already uses digital customs in exports from Brazil to Jordan, thus making it possible to use the electronic format to issue and verify documents. Gamal said the entity has an integrated digital platform ready to be implemented by the Egyptian Customs Authority and talked about the experience with Jordan, which was the first Arab country to use the process.
According to Gamal, the ABCC plans on expanding it to all Arab countries, particularly Egypt, given it is the only Arab country with a free trade agreement with Brazil through Mercosur, so there is a great opportunity to multiply the volume of trade between the countries.
Gamal said that the digital link between the customs authorities from both countries would streamline intraregional trade and eliminate all chances of adulteration of physical documents, as well as confirm the existence of over 2,700 signatures and certificates in Brazil, all of them in Portuguese, which causes difficulties in checking them. But these barriers could be ruled out by using the digital customs system, he said.
The meeting was also attended by Ahmed Abu Al-Hassan, head of the Central Administration of Affairs the Office of the President of the Customs Authority, Osama Abdel Karim, head of the Central Administration of Information and Communication Technology, as well as Ali Jalal, general director of Affairs of the Minister’s Office in the Central Administration of Affairs of the President’s Office. The ABCC was also represented by director of International Relations of the Egyptian organization, Rania Mohamed Hagrass.
Translated by Moein Alaia & Guilherme Miranda
