The Customs office of the city of Shanghai recently announced that it is using a new import declaration policy, as of this past January to make customs clearances more efficient and to lower the costs for importers, Pudong Times reports on March 8, noting that the policy has already benefited 185 companies in just the first two months, involving cargo imports worth $220 million.

According to the new policy, once a company gets the cargo manifest, it can make the customs declaration, and then submit the requisite material for inspection so that, when the cargo arrives at customs, it can claim the cargo immediately, making it quite convenient.

One beneficiary of the new policy is the Shanghai Jingwei International Trade Co, whose deputy GM, Wang Xiaochun, says that it's a real time-saver, cutting the clearance process down, from five hours to just half an hour, since they can deal with the declaration ahead of time without having to wait for the cargo to arrive.

Shanghai Customs officers have said that the new policy went through a trial run at the Pujiang and Pudong Airport customs offices at the end of 2015 and turned out well, so local authorities plan to apply the policy across the entire city this year.