CPSC to Test 'Streamlined' Option for Filing Product Safety Certificates at Entry

The Consumer Product Safety Commission plans to test out a “streamlined approach” to filing electronic certificates of compliance in its upcoming pilot program, said Carol Cave, director of CPSC’s Office of Import Surveillance and Inspection, during a webinar on March 12. Agency officials envision a “certificate registry,” where full certificates of compliance containing all required data elements would be filed in advance of entry, said Cave. At time of entry, importers and brokers would then only have to provide a certificate number generated by the registry that would reference the full certificate, she said.

The “reference number” option would eliminate the need to file a long list of certificate data elements with every entry. “If you were to file using the CPSC registry, the data elements would be filed with CPSC and then all that would be required on the CPSC side of the entry would be the limited set of data elements, such as the PGA -- that’s the mandatory field for Customs to say who the PGA is -- and potentially the certificate number,” said Cave. The importer or broker would be able to include a different certificate number for each line on the entry should the entry consist of multiple products, she said.

Each certificate filed in CPSC’s certificate registry would have a unique identifier that would allow CBP validation of the data element in the Automated Commercial Environment, said Cave. If a correction is necessary, the filer would receive an alert, but the cargo would not be held for examination, she said. In addition, CPSC and CBP are working on a list of HTS numbers that are associated with consumer products so that the entry could be flagged at the line level for possible certificate requirements. However, because many HTS numbers include both products that require certificates and products that do not, the importer or broker would still have to decide whether or not to include the certificate number data element.

Both the importer and authorized broker would be able to add a certificate to the CPSC registry, said Cave. CPSC staff is still grappling with the question of how far in advance of entry a certificate would have to be added, she said. The registry itself would be confidential, so certificates in the registry could not be sent to third-parties in order to satisfy the requirement that certificates be provided to retailers and distributors, said Cave.

CPSC will also test another filing option in the pilot, where importers would include a full set of certificate data for each line item on each entry that requires a certificate. This is “most likely not the ideal choice for most filers,” especially for those with “thousands of certificates on file” that don’t want to key in the data elements every time, said Cave. “However, there may be small business folks who do not have that ability to file, and have to use this method for filing because they have no other way,” she said.

The electronic filing pilot, first announced in November (see 1411100043), comes in response to concern from importers over the additional burden they face should CPSC associate electronic certificates with entry filing (see 14032025), as the agency proposed in May 2013 (see 13051018). CPSC currently anticipates the pilot will begin in February 2016, and the agency intends to outline participation criteria in a Federal Register notice it has tentatively scheduled for April 2015. According to Cave, the agency is initially seeking “less than ten” participants.

The March 12 webinar where Cave outlined CPSC’s plans was the first of three public meetings with a workgroup of CBP’s Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC). The webinars will be held every two weeks, with the next scheduled for April 26, said CBP Senior Trade Advisor Maria Luisa Boyce, who was also present. The workgroup will present its recommendations at the COAC meeting scheduled for April 24. According to Cave, CPSC also plans a webinar specifically for customs brokers to explain certificate requirements.