Digitalising goods clearing operations in Douala seaport

In January 2016, the digitisation of the Guichet unique du commerce extérieur (GUCE – the one-stop shop for external trade) of Cameroon enabled the State to raise and secure over FCfa 300 billion. 

These are in fact the first results of the GUCE dematerialisation project, which aim is to gradually implement a digital GUCE based on the complete digitisation of customs procedures. A system which has come to replace the physical GUCE, which gathered in the same location all players of the chain, whether public or private.

According to Isidore Biyiha, Managing Director of GUCE, to this day 25 procedures have already been digitised out of 38. “The digitisation of procedures is at the same time a significant time-saving operation and helped secure the State’s income… What took a week to process can now be done in 5 minutes”. Following this, we learned from Abdoullahi Faouzi, Head of Operations at GUCE, that the time spent by the goods at GUCE has been significantly reduced.

For example, he explained that the customs clearance for cars now take 48 hours instead of 7 days, customs declaration clearance has reduced from over 6 days to less than 3 hours, the issuance of PVI receipts has moved from 72 hours to less than 2 hours, just as the upload of the bill of lading (300 pages) moved from about 7 days to less than a minute.

During the coming months, GUCE should expand its digitisation project to the whole country, particularly to the Kribi and Limbe ports, we learned. To accomplish this, 300 sites have already been chosen, and Abdoullahi Faouzi stressed that phase 1 started with 89 sites which should be completed by the end of the second quarter of 2016.