Customs Dept. extends e-registration deadline till 14 Nov.

• DG says no further extensions will be granted
• Entities or individuals who fail to comply with extended deadline will automatically become defunct
• Traders with no activities for a year deactivated, will have to re-register to reactivate services  

By Charumini de Silva

Sri Lanka Customs has decided to extend the deadline to submit e-registrations till 14 November, considering the prevailing circumstances due to COVID-19 and the continuous requests made by the stakeholders.

The earlier deadline was 31 October and Sri Lanka Customs Department requested all stakeholders to complete the online registrations at http://customs.gov.lk/registrations/login

The e-registration was initiated to streamline and secure the existing freighter registration at Customs.

“We observed a huge traffic in the Customs system, as many people are trying to log in at the last minute. Considering the current prevailing circumstances due to COVID-19 and the continuous requests made by the trade associations, we have decided to extend the deadline by another two weeks to submit online registrations. Hence, you may inform all your members who did not submit or partly submitted registrations to complete registrations on or before 14 November,” Customs Director General Major General (Retd.) Vijitha Ravipriya said.

The Director General insisted that “no further extensions” will be granted for whatsoever, and the entities and individuals who fail to comply with the extended deadline will automatically become defunct.

Accordingly all the existing and new importers and exporters, shipping agents and sub-agents, clearing agencies and wharf clerks, Board of Investment (BOI) companies, unaccompanied passenger baggage (UPB) warehouse operators, and courier services should register online with Sri Lanka Customs before 14 November.

“Traders who had not imported or exported for more than a year have already been made deactivated. Those entities and individuals will need to complete the e-registration on or before the deadline to reactivate their services,” Sri Lanka Customs Additional Director General Sunil Jayaratne told the Daily FT.

Noting that they have received complaints regarding difficulties logging into the system as they reached the deadline for online registrations in the last few days of October, he assured that the Department has already been able to resolve this issue within a short period of time.

“Submit registrations without waiting till the last minute,” he added.

Jayaratne said that through the e-registration initiated by the Risk Management Unit of Sri Lanka Customs, they expect to minimise the risk of misusing the details of registered companies.

“The new mechanism aims to eliminate the misuse of Customs registrations, eliminate ability to create mushroom companies, facilitate legitimate trade, create a productive Customs database, and a introduce paperless, streamlined registration mechanism,” he added.