U.S. CUSTOMS STEPS UP ERP EFFORT

U.S. CUSTOMS STEPS UP ERP EFFORT    The U.S. Customs Service’s Entry Revision Project may have stalled this year, but the agency doesn’t plan to let it rest.
   ERP was initiated by Customs earlier this year as a way to work with the shipping industry to overhaul the country’s import entry process. The agency had hoped to make changes and pass them in this year’s miscellaneous trade bill, but some controversial sections of the proposed ERP kept it from going forward.
   Customs believes it’s especially important to pursue ERP because funding to begin building the agency’s future computer system, the Automated Commercial Environment, may start in 2001.
   “This is your last shot,” John Durant, director of commercial rulings at Customs, told executives of the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America. The agency will simply program ACE around the existing laws, if nothing is changed.