Alerts

The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (the department) has incorporated dried Ziziphus spp. dates onto the Compliance-Based Intervention Scheme (CBIS).

The change requires importers or their agents to lodge consignments with an AQIS Commodity Code (ACC). For consignments of dried permitted Ziziphus species, the following ACC must be applied:

• DATE

Who does this alert affect:
Importers and brokers of dried Ziziphus spp. dates.

What do I need to do?
Importers and brokers should continue to lodge documentation to the department as per their current practice (via COLS). When a consignment is lodged in the Integrated Cargo System (ICS) under the tariff code for dates (0804.10.00), you will be required to enter the relevant ACC, which must be entered in order to become eligible for CBIS. Consignments lodged without a required ACC will be ineligible for CBIS.

How does the CBIS work?
To qualify for risk-based inspection rates under the CBIS, importers must initially pass a defined number of consecutive inspections in order to demonstrate sufficient compliance. For dried dates, importers have to pass ten consecutive inspections to qualify. After qualifying for the risk-based inspection rates, the inspection rate is applied as a ‘probability of inspection’ individually to each eligible line within a consignment through AIMS. This means that an individual line may be referred into the department and selected to be inspected or not inspected. As the inspection rate for dried dates is 10%, then each eligible line has a 10% chance of being directed for an inspection. It does not mean that every 1 in 10 lines will receive an inspection.

If an importer fails to present the correct documentation, or their consignment fails an inspection then the importer will return to 100% inspection intervention until they requalify for the risk-based intervention rate.

All consignments are subject to a documentation assessment before being released by the department, regardless of the intervention mode that they are in.

Further Information:
More information can be found on the department’s CBIS webpage.

If you have any further questions, please contact Plant Import Operations on 1800 900 090 or via email at imports@agriculture.gov.au (Tier 2- CBIS).