Customs Clearance in Mozambique: Challenges to be Faced

Lizete Inalda Dulobo, Client Manager at World Despachos, explains what are the challenges to be faced when dealing with customs clearance in Mozambique.

“Everything needs to be done for tomorrow – for yesterday, even! Everything was due in yesterday, and nobody wants to pay more than what they should. That being the case, we are actually giving our clients (and whoever comes forward to us to ask for clarification) a set of clear directions; we tell them the way to go and how to deal with the issue so that they will not waste time. It is worth nothing that we do this even for imports and exports, because there are different times for each. In order to export any shipment outside Mozambique, we need to deal with customs. This has to take place not at the airport but rather in town, at the head office, and this takes time. So sometimes we are forced to hand over the documentation and then wait for their reply, which means that we have to station somebody there each and every day, maybe two or three times a day. These individuals pressurise the delivery workers, asking “where is my document?”, pushing it through quickly and saying “I need it asap”. This procedure, for other agents, is quite difficult, because to employ someone simply to hurry the deliverymen is also costly. So we are trying our very best to ensure that all of our clients are happy. This is not always an easy task, but we are trying hard”, says Lizete Inalda Nhantumbo.

“Another major challenge is the lack of support from qualified people. It is very difficult to find skilled individuals to get things done easily, without the need for arguments. Everybody is just coming out of school, with no experience at all, and having to start from zero is not an easy task. But we are getting on with the job at hand, training people all the time and trying to make them comfortable. That said, the lack of qualified people is certainly a major challenge here in Mozambique”, she adds.