Electronic Manifest for Rail and Sea Shipments to be Deployed This Month
(World Trade Interactive)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Aug. 12 that later this month it will be deploying new capabilities that will allow rail and sea carriers to transmit electronic manifest data to the Automated Commercial Environment.
According to an information notice, this ACE release (known as M1) includes a number of benefits for carriers. Carriers will be able to create a list of trade partners who are authorized to use their custodial bond to move imported cargo in-bond and ACE will automatically verify whether or not an in-bond carrier is authorized to move goods using the importer’s bond. Vessel-operating common carriers will be able to maintain conveyance records on all their owned, leased or chartered vessels within their ACE Portal Account, relieving them of the responsibility of having to file a manual update with CBP each time a change in a vessel’s status occurs. Other capabilities for carriers include viewing continuous bond data and receiving information on which participating government agency has held their merchandise.
The M1 release will also introduce several new reports as well as a new category of reports. There will be 12 new reports for rail and sea carriers, seven for brokers and two for importers. Customized reports can be shared with any user within the ACE Portal account.
In addition, new rules and edits will be in place. These include reporting a unique voyage indicator in the original ocean manifest submission, making place of receipt and foreign port of lading mandatory reporting data elements, editing Harmonized Tariff Schedule numbers for validity to the sixth position, editing valid bonds when carriers request in-bond moves or permits to transfer, validating the manifest unit of measure in both modes of transportation, and adding a quantity field to the PTT (TI/356) transaction set to allow a PTT to be optionally reported at less than full bill quantity.
Date: August 15, 2011
