GCC Services, an Agility company, and Agility partnered to support the Buliisa Community in Uganda for local health and education initiatives.
The program provided:
- Menstrual health and hygiene instruction, sanitary pads and women’s empowerment training for 850 young women;
- Computers for a school of 1,000 students, and connecting the school to the local electricity grid; and
- Donation of hospital beds, to be used by about 350 patients/year, and hygiene and sanitation training to hospital staff.
In many emerging market countries, customs clearance delays lead to lost cargo and capital, hindering trade, as well as trade’s ability to power economic growth. Many emerging market countries still depend on paper-based customs processing systems, with myriad government entities operating physically together, but without clear procedures for cooperation. Traders lose time moving from window to window, waiting for signatures and approvals, with cargo delayed by days, and sometimes even lost or expired in transit.
The burden of these delays falls predominantly on smaller traders, who generally lack the expertise and resources to manage these situations. For governments, these systems weaken enforcement of critical controls and inhibit revenue collection.
Inspection and Control Services (ICS), an Agility Infrastructure company, knows the pain points of customs collection first-hand. To facilitate trade, ICS developed MicroClear®, a fully integrated end-to-end web-based Customs and Single Window Solution that simplifies customs clearance. Where needed, ICS supports MicroClear® implementation by collaborating across multiple government agencies to simplify tariff rules, rewrite business processes, and coordinate customs procedures, helping everyone to trade faster and more transparently.
When the MicroClear® solution was implemented in Kuwait in 2005, government revenue increased by 58% over 3 years, and continued to increase, while the average time for customs clearance dropped from an average of 21+ days to 120 hours. After implementation in Pakistan, average customs clearance time dropped from 3-4 days to less than 5 minutes for participating berths at the Port of Karachi.
MicroClear® projects have made a difference, and continue to do so in more than 10 countries, saving time and money for the public and private sector alike.