A plane of Air Macao. [Photo/VCG]
Power battery components worth 39,700 yuan ($5,920) from CATL were recently cleared through Xiamen Airport Customs and shipped out on Air Macao flight NX131, after their declaration data was transmitted through Macao's electronic customs platform.
The shipment marks the first pilot of a new system that lets air cargo between the mainland and Hong Kong and Macao be declared by both sides using a single set of data.
Under the "one entry, two declarations" model, companies enter their cargo information just once through China's single-window trade platform.
The system then automatically converts it, through a secure data channel and unified translation rules, into the formats required by the mainland and Hong Kong and Macao and sends it to the relevant customs systems.
Compared with the old process, this air freight model lets mainland export declaration data be shared and reused with Macao, cutting declaration time by more than 30 minutes and further lowering customs costs for companies.
The model opens a data-sharing channel for customs declarations between Chinese mainland companies and their counterparts in Hong Kong and Macao. On the Macao side, the number of mandatory fields companies must fill in has dropped from 24 to just three, significantly speeding up cargo declarations.