Customs commissioner Dr K N Raghavan completes an eventful innings

KOCHI: After completing an eventful five-year stint as customs commissioner, Kochi, Dr K.N. Raghavan is moving on to the next assignment as NORKA-Roots CEO. Mr Raghavan feels that streamlining customs processes for imports and exports in the aftermath of shifting of all activities relating to containerised cargo to ICTT Vallarpadam has been one of the significant achievements during his tenure. “This involved setting up the Custom Export Processing Centre at Vallarpadam so that export containers from the factory can move directly to port terminals without going first to any container freight station (CFS). After implementing this, the movement of all import containers to CFS from the port terminal for examination commenced,” Mr Raghavan said.

“There was a spurt in gold smuggling post-2013 following the hike in Customs duty on gold to 10%. A combination of risk analysis based on passenger profile along with stricter non-intrusive inspection of cargo was adopted to tackle this challenge. It yielded results as seen from the huge hauls of gold in Cochin International Airport during the period since July 2013. The strategy adopted also involved measures to identify the main financiers and kingpin of smuggling syndicates and take action against them, instead of limiting it to carriers of gold. Detention orders under COFEPOSA were also issued in more severe cases, and action for forfeiture of property also launched. Thus, a multi-pronged attack was launched on smugglers to burn the menace caused by gold smuggling.”

Mr Raghavan said that there were numerous cases of seizures of narcotic drugs which included ketamine, amphetamine and hashish. Other contraband seized included red sanders wood, wildlife flora and fauna and silver. “In Kochi, the dwell time (time taken from the arrival of a vessel carrying cargo till clearance from customs) used to be in the range of 15-16 days in 2012-13. That was brought down to almost eight days by 2017. The Customs complement of dwell time (time taken only for assessment and examination of goods) was brought down to less than 1.5 days from 4-5 days earlier. This helped in faster clearance of goods which in turn led to a reduction in transaction costs,” he said.

The five years saw numerous commercial frauds involving evasions of customs duty and misuse of provisions of export promotion schemes being detected. “In one case involving evasion of customs duty wherein commercial equipment were imported under guise of ship stores, '40 crore was recovered,” he said A new initiative named Customs Cadet Corps (CCC) was launched by Cochin Customs in 2015 for the first time in the country for students.  To harness the potential of social media, a Facebook page of Cochin airport customs was launched in January 2016 which gives details about the customs laws and procedures that all international travellers should know.