Federal Revenue: Increasingly Active

Hail – that may have been the expression used at the time of the inauguration of organized operations at the Port of Santos in 1892 when the English-flagged steamship Nasmith docked on the 260 meters of the Valongo dock. Long before that, however, in 1550, there was already a Customs House in Santos. In fact, not only here but in practically all ports worldwide, customs have always played a significant role due to their revenue collection and control nature. Therefore, they have always been an institution of direct interest to government officials, traders, and the general population.

Taking this long journey, we arrive today at this sea of bad news and negative situations that Brazil and the world are going through with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and its terrible consequences. Nevertheless, positive facts, when rare, need to be valued, as is the case with the topic we will address in this article, which is of utmost importance for customs activities performed in this city.

We refer to the actions of the customs inspection of the Customs Office of the Port of Santos, which has been anticipating technological procedures for the control and inspection of goods destined for export or imported, using highly technical and intelligent procedures, based on the rules established by the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) program, as provided for in Normative Instruction No. 1,598/2015 of the General Coordination of Customs Administration (Coana).

There are always those who view the initiative as premature or hasty, but this thinking should be set aside to the extent that the Federal Revenue is the most prepared government agency, a situation it has reached over the years, with examples being the implementation of the Integrated Foreign Trade System (Siscomex) and complementary systems that give it robustness and very high efficiency. With a staff of highly trained fiscal agents, the Federal Revenue conducts efficient inspections of customs procedures and operations, resulting almost always in the seizure of a significant quantity of undeclared goods or even contraband, such as drugs.

As for deadlines, customs clearance, which used to take an average of eight, ten days, and sometimes even more, to materialize, now occurs in hours or even minutes. At this moment, with the implementation (ongoing) of the procedures of the AEO program, the “over-water” customs clearance system came into effect, a modality in which cargo is cleared before being unloaded at the port, functioning as an “advance clearance,” benefiting, obviously, companies considered “strategic partners” of the Federal Revenue.

Another good example of the modernization process that the Federal Revenue’s inspection is undergoing is the system called “Fronteira Tech,” installed at the end of last year on the International Friendship Bridge, which connects Foz do Iguaçu-PR to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, the busiest border in Brazil, through which about one hundred thousand people and 40 thousand cars pass daily. Installed in partnership with the Brazilian Industrial Development Agency (ABDI) and the Institute of Technological Development (INDT), the system represented an important reinforcement of the customs control exercised by the Federal Revenue.

For older customs brokers and dispatch agents, all these changes can cause understandable apprehension. However, they constitute an irreversible situation resulting from the normal development of technological operations that will undoubtedly place Brazil among the most modern nations in the field of foreign trade.

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Milton Lourenço (1953-2020) was the founder of the Fiorde Group, consisting of the companies Fiorde Logística Internacional, FTA Transportes e Armazéns Gerais, and Barter Comércio Exterior (trading company). Email: fiorde@fiorde.com.br. Website: www.fiorde.com.br.

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