In Chamber Shoes - The International Team

Crossing Borders

The Chamber recently added a Customs Declarations service to its repertoire of International Services to help assist traders in Tayside and Fife comply with the new obligations required to get goods through the border. Part of HMRC’s plan for the future of Customs is to phase in a new system called “CDS” by 2022 so today, Vince spent the day in Training to look over the new system. CHIEF (the current system) has its quirks, its unique challenges but it generally works just fine. By the looks of it, CDS will have its own set of funky quirks for traders and customs brokers. On the plus side, there’s no box 44, on the downside, there are 437 document codes (nearly 200 more than CHIEF).

International Missions

Tuesday sees the Scottish Chamber network get together to discuss the International Trade programme that we run on behalf of the Scottish Government. We heard about building business connections between Scotland and China, Mongolia, Manhattan, Germany, Nova Scotia and Florida.

The plans for 2021 are exciting as the network looks to develop business and commercial relationships to help Scottish businesses grow.

DACC is running virtual missions to Rotterdam, Netherlands and Virginia, USA in the first quarter of 2021. And there will be further missions to Dubai, UAE as we deepen the sister city connections between Dundee & Dubai and work with Scottish Chambers on the DubaiEXPO activity.

The NI Protocol

News breaks today that supermarkets will be given extra time to phase in new checks, ensuring food supplies from GB to Northern Ireland do not face disruption from 1 January - whether or not there is a Brexit deal. The UK and EU have also agreed, under the part of the original withdrawal deal that deals with Northern Ireland - known as the NI Protocol – to implement a trusted trader scheme, which means all goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will not face any tariffs.

Our international team will need to keep a close eye on updates to these decisions and how they impact local firms trading with Northern Ireland and the EU.

International Members Meeting

Our International Members Group held its last meeting of 2020 where, unsurprisingly, Brexit challenges were top of the agenda. We heard about issues with supply of goods from Europe, challenges around customs clearances and export licences. The collective expertise within the group and the sharing of connections, ideas and solutions is proving really valuable.

Feedback for Vince on his succinct explanation around the Chamber Brexit support and new Customs service was really positive. An hour well spent!

Roundtable with Jamie Hepburn, MSP

A busy day as the Team got together for the end of week team meeting, celebrating Christmas Jumper Day. At lunchtime we hosted a Business Roundtable with Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills. With topics of discussion ranging from support for hospitality recovery in 2021, a call for investment in UK manufacturing and renewed focus on start-up businesses to help Scotland on the road to a strong post-Covid economy, unsurprisingly the conversation moved to concerns around goods being stuck at UK ports and a call for the four UK nation governments to work really closely together to ensure businesses don’t suffer over the next few months as we all look towards Deal or No Deal headlines.

The International Team will be on hand during the run up to the year end, and into early January, operating a reduced hours Festive service, so please get in touch if we can help at all.

We look forward to working with you all in 2021!