Competitiveness Bill: "Customs Self-Clearance"
Third installment of our series on the Competitiveness and Cost of Living Reduction Bill.
The Bill enables companies to operate in international trade without the need to hire a customs broker.
The initial takeaway is "fewer intermediaries, lower costs." However, the question we suggest asking ourselves is: who will assume the risk and costs when something goes wrong?
What changes: liability does not disappear, it shifts
The Bill creates "customs self-clearance" (autodespacho aduanero) for individuals with business activities, legal entities, and de facto partnerships, applicable to definitive imports and exports. It will require accredited technical training, sufficient guarantees, and prior registration with the National Directorate of Customs.
Currently, a significant portion of customs risk falls on the customs broker, who answers with their license and surety bond. With self-clearance, the same liability assignment criteria that apply to brokers today will apply directly to the self-clearing company. This means that a tariff classification or valuation error will no longer be "the broker's problem": it will become a direct contingency for the company, with penalties that even include suspensions of up to 10 years and disqualification.
Practical application
Low-volume companies: For a company with few foreign trade operations per year, delegating to a customs broker may be more efficient than implementing an internal customs compliance structure.
High-volume companies: For a company with a high volume of repetitive and standardized operations (same product, same origin, same regime), the investment in training and guarantees for self-clearance may be justified.
To weigh which alternative to adopt, we would suggest:
Assess the annual volume of foreign trade operations required by your ordinary business operations and their level of standardization: self-clearance pays off in repetitive operations, not in occasional or complex ones.
Quantify the current cost derived from hiring a customs broker versus the projected cost of training, guarantees, and an internal customs compliance structure.
Review the company's insurance policy: the liability currently covered by the broker through their license will be directly assumed by the company under self-clearance.
Evaluate the opportunity: If the company already has a foreign trade department with trained staff, evaluate the convenience and timing of accrediting them in the self-clearance registry once the Law is approved, before there is a high demand for registrations.
Ultimately, self-clearance will not automatically and uniformly simplify operations for all companies. It will be advisable in each case—based on the specific characteristics and needs of each business—to determine the most convenient solution: maintaining the current service offered by the customs broker or utilizing the self-clearance regime proposed by the Competitiveness Bill. This decision must take into account that the new system will shift the risk to the company and, in particular, to the individuals within the company assigned to that task.