SAD news gets mixed reaction from industry
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• The EEC's decision to proceed with the Single Administrative Document, which is designed to reduce the amount of paperwork at border crossings within the EEC, has met with a mixed response from the industry.
Caroline Trewitt of the FTA says the SAD will replace up to 75 different forms currently operating in the EEC, when it is introduced on January 1, 1988, and should make exporting and importing far more straightforward. The introduction of the new forms should also be a step towards the computerisation of all import and export movements within the EEC, currently scheduled for 1992.
A series of dummy runs using the SADs last year taught everyone a lot, says Trewitt: "People were tending to give more information than was actually required." She feels the SADs should provide a significant reduction in paperwork and may enable SADs — designed to cut down border delays.
exporters to complete their own export documents.
The Institute of Freight Forwarders, however, is unenthusiastic about them. Director-general Gordon Brown says trials by IFF members of SADs resulted in increasing delays in clearance of imports and increased the details in export forms, with a consequential increase in processing time.
For nearly all imports," says Brown, "it will rarely be practical to use the document created overseas by the shipper without increasing delay in clearance, and incurring consequential extra transport charges."