Form 13 sounds old fashioned and 13 is unlucky - a major bottleneck to exports. This form allows a container to enter a terminal for onward loading. A shipping line’s agent issues this form. The form passes many hands - surveyor, CHA, transporter, forwarder, shipper, and finally to CISF at the gate. This was needed in the past when there were no computers. Today, most work digitally. Shipping Bill is generated on Icegate. Terminals run on systems. Shipping lines do most of their work online. This Form contains no additional information that can not be taken or inferred from the Shipping Bill, Check List, or CLP. And yet, a shipping agent has to duplicate all this data from the Shipping Bill or its equivalent docs into this Form, add its name, a vessel and issue it. This was a paper Form in the past & these days you need to scan and upload loads of docs to the shipping line and the terminal along with a non-standard data summary. Basics remain the same.
The Shipping Bill or its equivalent contains container numbers. The Terminal is provided with a load list by the carrier. The load list contains container numbers. A container number in this load list also indicates its box operator, weight, and other data.
So, the container number in the shipping bill or its equivalent, can be easily reconciled with the loadlist held by the terminal operator. If the container numbers match, the terminal can allow the unit in. The loadlist is a mandate by the box operator to allow to load, while the shipping bill or its equivalent is a mandate from the Customs Authorities to allow export. This is as simple as that. So this Form 13 can be done away with. This abolition would make our lives easier and simpler while giving a major phillip to EoDB (Ease of Doing Business). The Terminal can check the customs docs and allow the unit in - as long as the number exists in the loadlist given by the carrier. This is for the time being. In future, the terminals can fetch this data from Icegate and reconcile with the data of the load list collected from the carriers - automatically. At the same time all terminals should use a common format for accepting container list or load list data from the carriers to ease this event. The common format can be in excel, edi, jason or simple csv files. This would decongest the roads and gates at the terminals and make this process substantially efficient.
