Papelório, demoras e corrupção? avaliação da organização e procedimentos na Alfândega do Porto de Maputo

Abstract

The port of Maputo is one of the national routes through which the country carries out its imports and exports, as well as those of the countries in the region. There, all goods pass through customs at the port of Maputo, the supervisory institution that collects the duties due for goods entering or leaving the country. Unfortunately, customs at the port of Maputo is highly bureaucratic, which leads to delays, smuggling and corruption in the importation of goods. The number of documents required is high and could be reduced; procedures are many and could be simplified and fees are poorly applied. To assess customs organization and procedures, I analyzed a sample of 5% of 1995 imports, having randomly selected 150 processes divided into five classes of goods: consumer goods, raw materials, industrial equipment, vehicles and audiovisual equipment. When importing goods at the port of Maputo, 9 to 10 documents are required by customs. These documents are obtained from different institutions and 46% of the information required in them is repetitive, forcing the importer to provide the same information many times. Some information is even irrelevant and should be suppressed. In a short-term proposal — before the entire computerization foreseen by the new customs management, Crown Agents, there should only be four of the nine documents foreseen. The five or six should be consolidated into a single document to minimize paperwork. Even worse, some of these documents carry too many stamps, more than 30 for each process. In addition to being vast, a part of the required documentation is sealed, for example, the import clearance, the vehicle entry and the bill of lading. The obligation to seal documents only aggravates the bureaucracy, as time is lost in looking for and pasting stamps since the place where stamps are sold is far from the customs agent or customs. Since the documentation required by customs is vast and, according to the sample, no one presents it in its entirety, it is imperative to redefine and limit the documents that are strictly necessary for importing goods. Customs procedures are many and complex. The importer has to take 28 steps and, consequently, suffers long delays, on average 47 days, to clear goods. Some of the steps are irrelevant and could be eliminated — for example, multiple stamps and process numbering systems and redundant steps in the picket. In the counting section, the order is numbered, the BRJs are filed, the information contained in the orders is registered and registered in them. In the revenue section (this is not the treasury), the dispatch has another stamp, the recipe number is placed and the form is signed. By stamping the back of the CRF, the amounts paid are registered and filed with the customs picket. There is no need to put so many numbers, because if you were to identify the process, the order number that the dispatch report carries would suffice. Even worse, this information is not used later. BRIs are not always archived, as they sometimes have a validity of six months and, at the end of their validity, they could be attached to the last import process. Fees are misapplied, resulting in large revenue losses. In the sample studied, the number of cases of underestimation of duties account for 3% of all imports of the five products, 1995. The losses are even greater, as customs offenses in Maputo are registered many tax offenses — smuggling, transgressions, under-invoicing and others missteps. Overall, the underestimates were 119.6 billion meticais. In the medium term, customs at the port of Maputo must make profound changes to eliminate bureaucratic barriers, paperwork, corruption, transgressions, smuggling, embezzlement and tax calculation errors. The way to do this is the computerization of all customs activity. With computerization it would be possible to reduce contact between customs officials and the importer and, consequently, the sources of corruption. Of the numerous documents involved in importing now, only two would be needed in a computerized system: the bill of lading and the commercial invoice. Official dispatchers would not travel as much; its costs would be reduced; and therefore the fees to be charged to their customers would also decline. With cheaper inputs and products, the entire country would be more efficient(TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)