St. Lucia Customs & Excise Department

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Documents

Invoices
Documents of Title (Airway bill/ Bill of Lading)
Certificate of Origin (for goods manufactured from another Caricom country)
Form 61 (For individual items exceeding a customs value of $2500.00)
Import Licenses/Import Permits (where applicable)
Phytosanitary Certificate
Bill of Sight (in the absence of proper invoices)

Procedure

Under the Customs Control and Management Act No. 23 of 1990 persons importing goods by air are required to submit a customs entry within seven (7) days of importation of those goods, by sea this document must be submitted within fourteen (14) days of importation. Exempt from the above are fresh fish (including shell fish) caught by St. Lucia fishermen and imported by them in their vessel, passenger’s accompanied baggage. St. Lucia Customs and Excise Department reserves the right to refuse to accept any entry of goods if they are dissatisfied that those goods were imported at the time of presentation of the customs entry. Where an error is found on the submitted entry an importer may be granted a period of ten (10) days to account for it. If after final submission the department is still dissatisfied with the entry the person will become liable to penalties under the law.

Note: Persons submitting incorrect and false information on the submitted entry are liable to penalties and seizure of the related goods.

ASYCUDA++

Cargo Control Unit

The Entry Processing Unit or E.P.U is primarily responsible for validating import declarations. This involves the checking of Customs Import Entries to compute the correct duties payable and ensure statistical correctness based on relevant and acceptable accompanying Documentation. The documents required for that Process are:

Import License or other licenses or certificates for meats, Plant Products and Firearms
Invoices (two or three copies when required) or other evidence of value, packing list, and when necessary, certified translations.
Evidence of freight charges. – (Freight account – Bill of Lading, Airway bill).
Certificate of origin and evidence of consignment for CARICOM goods
Work sheet when there are several invoices or Tariff items.

The procedure is as follows:

Attesting Officer receives customs declaration and checks relevancy and completeness of information on forms. The data entry officers enter the entry into ASYCUDA and get an assessment number, which they write, on the physical entry. The entry is then passed on to the classification officer. The officer ensures that the tariff numbers are correct, the goods have been classified correctly, and other aspects of authenticity including valuations The Entry is then passed on to the Checking Officer who validates the declared Customs Value and checks for required documentation. If the entry has a concession or is a Bond Importation then it is passed on to the Trade and Bond seat officers respectively for approval before the checking process is completed. The Trade Officer must review the concession details for the importer and ascertain that the declaration is consistent to the concession given. The Bond Officer verifies the particulars of the Bond. The Checking Officer prints assessment notice. The entry for each copy separates the copies for statistics and customs, importers. The Importer’s copy is returned to the Attesting Officer for onward transmission so that duties can be paid to the cashier at the Accounts section. The rest of the copies are sent to the cashier. *At any stage of the transaction, if any discrepancy is found on the declaration the Declarant is notified on a Query Form

For more information please contact Customs and Excise Department