Under the new facilities, importers can now submit customs declarations for unloaded shipments online unless the goods have been stored in licensed customs warehouses.

The facilities also allow using insurance documents as a guarantee for direct transit trade, in addition to cash and banking guarantees.

Transit trade refers to the flow of goods through a country that neither produced nor consumed them but simply constitutes a transit point to transfer them to a different destination.

The Egyptian Customs Authority (ECA) announced that it would enable petroleum companies to amend licensed amounts to match those shipped within 72 hours, said El-Shahat Ghatori, Head of the ECA.

Ghatori added that the authority also waived some fines for petroleum companies to boost exports.

He noted that customhouse brokers, who have been delisted from the ECA's records, are now allowed to be relisted so long as the reasons for delisting cease to exist or one year elapses since the delisting. 

Egypt is working on accelerating customs release to tackle disruption in the supply chain triggered by the shortage in hard currency. 

The country released imported goods worth $131 billion through different customs ports and outlets until the end of June. 

Egypt aims to increase total annual exports to $100 billion by 2030. During the first nine months of FY 2022/23, the country's trade deficit dropped by 29.8 percent to only $23.6 billion.