Mexico’s Customs General Administration

As from September 1st, 2007 Mexico began with the transmission of information of incoming shipments to the SAT (Mexican Customs), similar to the AMS filing in the United States. This regulation is known as Regla 2.4.13, and the lack or delay of transmission may generate high fines and delays of customs clearance process. This regulation must be fulfilled by the shipping lines and also the freight forwarders and NVOCC.
Mexico’s Customs General Administration recently released documents regarding the correction of information to the customs manifest. We would like to bring your attention to the following points.

It is permitted to make corrections to the information previously transmitted, as long as it is prior to the vessel’s arrival at the final port of discharge. It is permitted to make corrections to the information previously transmitted, as long as it is PRIOR to the vessel’s arrival at the final port of discharge. Once the cargo has been discharged, it is considered to be within the customs fiscal area and no corrections are permitted.
Changes in weight corrections to the weight are permitted, as long as it is within 1% of the originally declared weight.
Consolidation or Division of BL’s can only be done prior to the vessel arrival at port of discharge. Maritime Documents cannot be split or consolidated once the container(s) have been discharged.
It is forbidden to make any changes to the cargo when:

A) It has already gated out of the terminal
B) During the process of clearing customs or
C) The container is already empty

For the time being and exceptional cases, Mexican Customs can permit changes to cargo already discharged. In order to comply with this, a special process has to be followed by the Port Terminal. If Mexican Customs approves such change, it will take additional times (days, even weeks) to process with no responsibility to Intercom and/or shipping lines. In the meantime, all maneuvers, unstuffing process, customs clearance, release and delivery of cargoes are hold until further Customs approval. In order to comply and avoid delays and extra costs, we ask you to provide us with the most accurate cargo description on time. Any requests to change the manifested cargo must be at least 48 hours PRIOR to vessel’s arrival to the final port of discharge.