Sri Lanka Customs, in an effort to make the import and export process seamless, has partnered with LankaClear to introduce LankaSign digital signatures for online document submission.
This was ceremonially launched under the patronage of State Minister of Finance, Capital Markets and State Enterprise Reforms, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, at an event held recently at Sri Lanka Customs auditorium.
Deputy Secretary to the Treasury, R. M. P. Rathnayake; Director General of Customs, Major General (Rtd.) G. Vijitha Ravipriya; Director Payments and Settlement of the Central Bank, Dharmasri Kumaratunge; Chairman of LankaClear, Dr. Kenneth De Zilwa; and GM/CEO LankaClear Channa de Silva were also present at the event, LankaClear said in a media release.
For many years, document submission to Sri Lanka Customs was a manual process. Ending this cumbersome and ineffective process, Sri Lanka Customs introduced online document submission following the migration to ASYCUDA World in 2012. As a result, declarants were able to submit scanned images of import/export documents to Sri Lanka Customs.
However, the use of Electronic Signatures for the current document submission process was found to be vulnerable in the face of rising cyber security threats worldwide, the statement said. As a solution, Sri Lanka Customs partnered with LankaClear in introducing LankaSign Digital Signatures for documents submitted to Sri Lanka Customs. Addressing the gathering Minister Cabraal stated: “These types of progressive initiatives would improve the entire business process and ensure Sri Lanka climbes the Ease of Doing Business index by a few notches. I commend the efforts of Sri Lanka Customs officials to further improve the business climate in the country”.
For the proposed system to work seamlessly, importers, exporter, banks, clearing agents need to sign up online with LankaSign to obtain Digital Signatures. LankaSign is Sri Lanka’s only commercially operating certification authority approved by the National Certification Authority Task Force, which is the governing body for digital certification service providers in the country.
Customs chief Major General (Retd.) G. Vijitha Ravipriya said: “I am proud to be a part of this latest initiative of our team where numerous steps have been taken to completely automate the Customs clearing process. This latest automation would immensely benefit the traders to carry out their clearing process with minimal difficulties. It will also help our staff to process the clearing requests in a much more efficient manner with greater security”.
The release said Chairman of LankaClear Dr. Kenneth De Zilwa had stated that: “LankaClear is a successful Public-Private-Partnership that was established in 2002 initially for the purpose of clearing interbank cheques. In 2006, we set up the first automated Cheque Imaging and Truncation System as the first entity in South Asia and the second in the world to do so. LankaClear has also facilitated automated payments towards customs declarations since 2017 and I am happy to be associated with this latest initiative of Sri Lanka Customs to completely automate the document submission process in a secure and an efficient manner by using LankaSign Digital Signatures”.
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