Bangladesh will spend $69.46million to establish a single window for Customs with the goal of easing pressure on regularly congested infrastructure.
The single window will bring all of the government departments involved in importation and exporting under an integrated information technology network and eliminate the use of paper for numerous customs declaration such as certificates of origin.
“If we can summit documents electronically and those are checked immediately online, we will be able to get our goods exported and delivered quickly,” an electronic goods importer, Alamgir Hossain said.
The single window will also cut down on tax and duty evasion by making it more difficult to carry out fraud.
Bangladesh’s National Board of Revenue will implement the project, which will connect the Customs department, the Central bank, Bangladesh Investment Development Authority, the office of the Registrar of Joint Stock companies and firms, all the banks and service providing agencies.
Bangladesh’s exports doubled their world market share between 1995 and 2012 as the value of those exports also doubled as a result of rapid growth in the ready- made garment industry. The industry makes up 80 percent of Bangladesh export, according to IHS market data.
Bangladesh infrastructure is in dire need of improvement particularly the Chittagong port, which is crippled by congestion more often than not.
“The inability of the transport and logistics network to keep up with the pace of demand is hampering trade performance,” the World Bank said in the single window project document.
The country ranks 87 out of 160 countries on the World’s Bank 2016 Logistics Performance Index, compared with 35 for India.
