Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly held a meeting on Tuesday evening to follow up on the position of the National Single Portal for Foreign Trade Facilitation (Nafeza) System and Advanced Cargo Information System (ACI) with members of the concerned authorities. Madbouly highlighted the importance of expanding the application of the Nafeza and the ACI systems given their role in governing and simplifying procedures, shortening time, and reducing costs, and thus controlling the import system to reduce pressure on hard currency. The meeting also tackled the executive position to activate the ACI system through the Nafeza system in cooperation with the Ministries of Finance, Trade and Industry, and the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), which achieves digitisation and automation of all procedures for seaports electronically and linking them to all dealers with ports. Furthermore, indicators were presented to follow up the analysis of the situation of imports through the ACI system — whether they are expected to arrive or have already arrived — and categorise them according to import purposes, whether industrial, commercial or personal, and discuss results that these indicators reflect. Additionally, they discussed and presented a model for applying the system at Cairo International Airport to get acquainted with the results of dealing through the ACI system for pre-charging phases. It was noted that the number of electronic documents received through the system reached 2,344 documents and that 451 customers went through the system, and it contributed to shortening average time for the pre-shipment phases. The meeting also witnessed a review of the results of an opinion poll conducted by the Information and Decision Support Centre affiliated with the Egyptian Cabinet in implementation of the PM's mandate to follow up on the performance of the ACI system in order to identify the most important obstacles facing importers. It was noted that an opinion poll of more than 500 importers held from 12 to 15 June 2022 included an evaluation of the performance of the system, cost of papers and documents needed for registration, time of customs release after application, and total costs of shipment after application, as well as their evaluation of the performance of the Nafeza platform. Moreover, the poll gathered information on what participants thought of the vision of the system's contribution to achieving discipline and reducing administrative corruption.
