Guangzhou Customs pioneers pilot program for B2B e-commerce exports

Customs authorities in Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong province, have been actively promoting an experimental supervision mode to boost cross-border B2B e-commerce exports.

（Photo/Nanfang Daily)

Cross-border B2B e-commerce export refers to the direct export of goods from domestic businesses to overseas businesses based on deals made on cross-border e-commerce platforms, or the export of goods by a domestic company to its overseas warehouse, from which the goods will be delivered to overseas buyers based on deals made on a cross-border e-commerce platform.

On Oct. 15, several groups of vans arrived at the international air cargo terminal of Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport at 11 a.m. The goods they were carrying were sent to X-ray machines for security checks.

Guangzhou Customs then matched the information on the goods and inspection instructions through a smart system. Those identified as requiring further examination were sent to the inspection area, where customs officials gave priority to inspecting B2B export goods for clearance, while those identified as not requiring further inspection were directly assembled and loaded for export. The customs clearance time was reduced to under one hour.

In addition to expedited clearance, declarations are also streamlined under the new mode. The staff member of a logistics company at Guangzhou’s Nansha port was seen logging in to the China International Trade Single Window platform to declare direct export of goods.

“With general exports of certain goods, we need at least three employees to classify the goods in one day. Thanks to the new mode that simplifies declarations, we can now reduce the processing time by 80 percent and only need one employee to carry out the work while at the same time significantly reducing errors,” said Huang Jinning, the company’s director of operations.

The new mode has greatly reduced the burden for small and medium-sized enterprises, said Wang Zhongquan, head of the Nansha cross-border e-commerce supervision department of Guangzhou Customs’ Nansha branch.

In addition, a range of customs clearance facilitation measures, including one-off registration and advance inspection, are also available to e-commerce B2B exporters.

In the first two months of the implementation of the pilot program, Guangzhou Customs inspected more than 1 million declaration forms for e-commerce B2B exports of 6.52 billion yuan worth of goods.

To allow B2B exporters to understand the latest policy and supportive measures as soon as possible, Guangzhou Customs, together with commerce departments and customs brokers associations in Guangzhou and Foshan, held several offline and live-streaming sessions on the new mode, attracting more than 300 companies.

Lin Jianbin, an official with Guangzhou Customs, also issued a guideline on the new procedures for B2B e-commerce export.

While advancing the pilot program in an orderly manner, Lin and his colleagues are also actively summing up the experience and lessons of the new customs practices so as to ensure that reforms in the regulation of cross-border B2B e-commerce exports can be replicated and applied across China.