Indonesia’s Customs and Excise Department has declared its plans to execute IBM and Maersk’s blockchain-based shipping solution, TradeLens.

According to a press release, the progress follows the department’s first statement that it was joining the TradeLens ecosystem last year. Indonesia Customs and Excise Department is the 3rd government institution in Southeast Asia to utilize the platform.

Officially announced in August 2018, TradeLens is a digital global trade platform that enables more accurate and efficient container tracking and data sharing among platform members. By digitizing formerly paper-based shipping processes, it promotes instant and perpetual end-to-end data.

“The customs and excise department aims to leverage the blockchain solution to simplify the exchange of goods, automate documentation and increase co-operation and communication between counterparties,” Agus Sudarmadi, Custom and Excise Director, stated. 

“With the Collaboration Application Programing Interface [API] concept, all logistics activities including trucking, warehousing, shipping, and freight forwarding at both domestic and global levels can now be brought together and shared through a single platform — TradeLens.”

By digitizing the processes, TradeLens will offer the department with an immutable and automatic tracking tool, which will lead to a more transparent, secure, efficient, and more straightforward workflow, with near real-time data sharing from a distinct network of ecosystem members.

With authorities obtaining shipping data as soon as containers leave the port of embarkation, the Customs and Excise Department will have more time to prepare to get shipments. 

This, in turn, would allow more effective and absolute fraud and forgery investigations as well as more constant and translucent revenue acquisition processes.

Sudarmadi added, “TradeLens will help bring further visibility, predictability, and security to us and will be a real asset for trade and transport facilitation, making Indonesia the preferred logistics and transport gateway in this region. It will also enable us to fulfill our mission to facilitate trade and to promote national logistics systems as well as contribute to the development of the national economy while meeting the most up-to-date standards set by the World Customs Organisation (WCO).”

The TradeLens ecosystem has expanded to over 100 member organizations, which involves freight forwarders, carriers, customs authorities, port authorities, and others. The platform recently manages 10 million events and across 100,000 documents every week.