A digital platform for Costa Rican Customs procedures is now online

As of March 8, 2021, the Costa Rican Ministry of Finance has made an online Customs platform available to the country’s entrepreneurs as well as to private sector businesses that are engaged in transnational trade. 

The purpose of introducing the service is to enable users to easily retrieve information related to Costa Rican Customs procedures and requirements. The Costa Rican National Customs Service acts as a tax collector, a trade facilitator, a controller of freight traffic, and an information generator for the Central American nation.

The IMF provides technical support

The platform’s name is “AduanaFácil,” or, in English, “Easy Customs.”  The Costa Rican National Customs Service designed it with the support of CAPTAC-DR (Regional Technical Assistance Center for Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic). CAPTAC-DR was established in 2009 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to provide technical assistance to promote macroeconomic and financial stability in the region.

This new tool is available for consultation and use as a menu option on the Ministry of Finance’s website: www.hacienda.go.cr.

Ministry of Finance officials recently expressed that, through this service, citizens can access information on customs procedures and formalities, forms, requirements, statistics and indicators related to import and export, customs regulations, user guides, communications of interest, proposals in public consultation, and auction dates, among other important classes of trade-related information. 

Additionally, as a part of this same platform, representatives of the Ministry of Finance explained in a recent statement that what is called the Customs Endpoint (PEA) has also been enabled.  This is a mechanism that provides a direct means of individual customer-specific service for ‘AduanaFácil’ users’ and their queries.

Costa Rican Customs procedures are applied with transparency

Costa Rica’s Finance Ministry has assured that the new online Customs platform promotes institutional transparency, facilitates lawful trade, promotes the simplification and standardization of Costa Rican Customs procedures, as well as voluntary compliance with all Customs laws.  During the process of building this platform, the Directorate-General for Customs took its importance to both government institutions and the end-user into account.

Alejandra Hernández, Deputy Minister of Finance Revenue, recently highlighted the objectives on which the Directorate General of Customs’ work sought to focus.

“This administration has drawn as the central interests of the work of the Customs Directorate the fight against smuggling and the strengthening of Customs to improve its ability to collect revenue and facilitate of foreign trade. State-of-the-art technological modernization will increasingly play a vital role in achieving these objectives. Easy Customs allows us to facilitate the relationship between our organization and its customers, as well as to have modern tools for management of the activities of all of the parties that are involved in international commerce,” she explained.

Meanwhile, the Director-General of Customs in Costa Rica, Gerardo Bolaños, also assured that the objective of AduanaFácil is to improve the service delivered to the platform’s users.

Through Easy Customs, the Costa Rican National Customs Service fortifies its commitment to better serve its users through this fast, effective and timely mechanism to access Customs-related information.