CHINA is understood to have informally relaxed the implementation of its own version of the so-called 24-hour rule for cargo, which was supposed to take effect on January 1.
According to industry sources an ‘informal’ grace period of three to six months is on offer, during which no fines would be levied on mistakes but only conditional upon a good faith effort on compliance.
Choosing not to file at all, however, is not understood to be covered by the amnesty.
A plan by the European Union to launch a similar 24-hour scheme across its 27 nation members is understood to have languished due to the difficulty of ensuring uniformity across all countries.
The Chinese system, however, is understood to be fully ready, but a time-out is being granted only to allow carriers to get used to it. The grace period is also designed to allow lines to test their systems for reliable eventual compliance, even as China fine-tunes its own recipient systems for this data. The Chinese version of the 24-hour manifest rule is a more elaborate and upgraded version of the US system that was born after September 11, 2001. China requires carriers to submit electronic manifests 24 hours prior to loading at a foreign port for both imports and exports.
The Chinese manifest system is applicable to container as well as non-container ships, and is to affect air cargo as well. Published information indicates that for imports or transhipped cargo, most of which is on non-containerships, an electronic manifest has to be filed 24 hours prior to loading at the foreign port.
For export cargoes from China, a pre-stowage manifest is required 24 hours prior to loading at mainland China ports, and a final manifest has to be in 30 minutes before loading. Vessels carrying non-manifested or rejected cargoes could be denied entry or exit rights from Chinese ports, for reasons that could include quarantine as well as national security.
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