Mangaluru (TOI): Travelling abroad and confused about the customs rules and regulations? Fret not. To help international air-passengers, R B Tiwari, chief commissioner of customs, Bengaluru zone, launched an online customs guide for international passengers at Mangaluru International Airport on Friday.

The Central Board of Excise and Customs has been taking several initiatives for smooth and quick clearance of cargo and baggage and passengers by reducing unwanted paperwork, said Tiwari. To further expedite processing of unaccompanied baggage declarations, faster delivery of baggage, improvement in transparency in clearance process and also, to reduce interface with the department, the unaccompanied baggage module has been launched by the Mangaluru customs.

Further, considering the passenger profile at the Mangaluru airport wherein about 97.7% of passengers are facilitated through the green channel, he said the need was felt to devise an online customs guide for international passengers in the form of an interactive webpage that could be accessed from any device. For example, desktop, laptop, smartphone or tab from anywhere.

It was also necessitated considering the number of queries received from passengers about carrying various items. This online guide has been devised to enable any passenger to know his/her entitlements of various items including gold jewellery, television, liquor, cigarettes and others in an easy, simple and interactive way.

The guide was launched on Friday in the presence of J T Radhakrishna, airport director, M Subramanyam, commissioner of customs, Mangaluru, officials of CISF, immigration, Airlines and Airport Authority of India.

The customs department in order to increase the levels of facilitation has been procuring several state-of-the-art equipment like baggage scanners. One such advanced scanner was also inaugurated by Tiwari on the occasion at MIA.

Addressing the gathering, he highlighted proactive measures taken by Indian customs to further facilitate international passengers, educating them by providing the relevant information in a very easily accessible mode and strengthening public grievance redressal mechanism. In this regard, he highlighted the customer feedback survey conducted at Bengaluru Airport which has revealed that more than 89% of passengers were satisfied with customs processes. Detailing a mobile app launched for the benefit of international passengers, he added that the same has been translated into regional languages like Malayalam, Kannada and Tamil and that the feedback received evidenced that the passengers have been finding it very useful.