. /.RESTRICTEDWORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONG/C/W/221
18 July 2000
(00-2953)
Council for Trade in Goods Original:  English
NORWAY’S EXPERIENCE ON TRADE FACILITATION
ELECTRONIC CUSTOMS PROCEDURES
The following communication, dated 14 July 2000, has been received from the Permanent
Mission of Norway.
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Trade facilitation has been part of the Norwegian trade- and customs policy for a long time.
Efforts in this area are perceived as crucial for lowering costs and enhancing the benefits of trade,both for the Norwegian authorities and for the traders and the society at large. As part of this policy,
the Norwegian customs authorities are continuously trying to simplify import and export procedures
as well as other customs related procedures.
As a contribution to future discussions in the Council for Trade in Goods on trade facilitation,
and consistent with the Singapore Ministerial mandate on trade facilitation, one method would be to
present papers on national experience. Such papers could play usefully into analytical and exploratory
work on a multilateral framework on trade facilitation, as well as providing the basis for needs
assessments in the context of capacity building and technical assistance.
This paper provides a summary of Norway’s national experience on customs facilitation in
the areas of electronic customs procedures and the development of a computerised transit system.
I. TVINN – THE ELECTRONIC CUSTOMS CLEARANCE SYSTEM
The Norwegian electronic clearance system TVINN has been applied to import declarations
since 1988 and to export declarations since 1992. Today, 96 per cent of all import and export
declarations are submitted electronically to the Regional Customs Administration and cleared throughthe TVINN system. The remaining 4% of the decl arations are presented manually, but processed
electronically.
The TVINN system is open 24 hours a day and declarations may be submitted at any time.
The electronic clearance system includes checks to detect declarations that contain errors or ought tobe closer examined by the custom authorities for other reasons. The consignment is normally released
without further interruption if the system finds no errors in the declaration, or it is not stopped due to
other parameters set in the system. Importers are linked on-line to the customs authorities and declare
goods electronically. Prior checking of declared value is carried out for 5 % of all declarations. In
addition to prior checking, post audit checks are performed by the Regional Customs authorities.
If the declarations are not stopped by this control mechanism, this process will normally take
3 – 4 minutes. The average clearance time (except for documents and consignments subjected to
further examination) is approximately 12 minutes from the declaration is submitted until the goods are
released. Goods that are customs cleared by TVINN will be released when the Regional Customs
Authority accepts the customs declaration assigned by a registration number.G/C/W/221
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II. OTHER ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS – THE NEW COMPUTERISED TRANSIT
SYSTEM
The Norwegian authorities have also developed electronic systems for assessing and claiming
excise duties and vehicle taxes, accounting, enforcement purposes and risk analysis. In order to
facilitate trade, a direct link from the customs authorities to the computer systems of othergovernmental authorities has been established. Such authorities include veterinary and agricultural
authorities, as well as licensing bodies.
The customs procedures and the electronic systems used in Norway are under constant
scrutiny aiming at further simplifications and effectiveness for both the customs authorities and the
economic operators. In the development of simplified procedures and electronic systems, the use of
international standards and recommendations are considered very important, and these are applied inmost cases if such standards exist.
During the last couple of years, work has been undertaken to update the Convention of
20 May 1987 on a common transit procedure. The aim of this work has been to develop the ”New
Computerised Transit System (NCTS)” together with the EU, the other EFTA countries and theVisegrad countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic). The EU and the
other countries are all Contracting Parties to th e Transit Convention between the EU and the EFTA
countries.
Difficulties throughout the transit procedure have caused, and continue to cause, significant
losses for the Contracting Parties and represent a permanent threat to trade and economic operators.
The modernisation of transit procedures has been considered necessary and computerisation
represents a significant element in this respect. With the introduction of new computerised procedures
based on the use of modern information technology and electronic data interchange (EDI)
1, the
exchange of information between the competent auth orities will be more secure and the information
more reliable. Economic operators may, subject to authorisation, enjoy the possibility of presenting
the transit declarations using a data-processing technique. The implementation and monitoring of
security measures are of vital importance to achieve and maintain a reliable and secure operation of
transit. The implementation of a new computerised transit system will be introduced in different
phases.
When the NCTS is up and running, transit of goods within Europe will be ”paperless” and all
communication concerning transit consignments between customs authorities will be carried out
through electronic messages. Norway will start the pilot application in September 2000, as one of five
countries.
III. CONCLUSION
The introduction of electronic customs procedures in Norway has been and continues to be
essential to Norway’s efforts in the area of trad e facilitation. The systems introduced so far have
worked to the benefit of Norwegian authorities and the players in international trade at large. We
continue to work on improving existing systems and to undertake new projects in the area, and hope
to return at a later stage to update members on these efforts.
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1 "EDI" (electronic data interchange) means that the tr ansmission of data is structured according to agreed
message standards.