Dubai: Travelling to Dubai? Do you know what items you are not allowed to bring in to the country and the procedure to declare goods? Dubai Customs is making the process easy for travellers.
During the ongoing 38th edition of Gitex Technology Week, Dubai Customs unveiled a new app which will soon be launched and will allow UAE travellers to check custom rules, declare items before arriving and calculate duty that they will have to pay on goods they bring to the country.
The new app called iDeclare is currently being tested and aims to ease the process for people looking to declare items at Dubai Customs. Ahmad Al Rasasi, Project Lead at Dubai Customs told Gulf News: “People can use the app to check what they are allowed to bring and what not to bring. What is prohibited and the charges they would be required to pay.” A number of items need to be declared as per Dubai Customs’ rules, such as any amount of money exceeding Dh100,000 and gift items exceeding the value of Dh3,000.
The process aims to cut down the time UAE travellers spend at Dubai Customs inspection office. Al Rasasi added: “This is easier than coming to the inspecting office if they suspect you have something to declare. You would sit there for 10-20 minutes, entering your information would take another 10-20 minutes.”
Explaining that the aim was to control illegal sales of goods in the country, Al Rasasi added: “People bring things that people can sell in the country that can affect the country’s economy. One person might not but a thousand people not paying duty and following the regulations will affect it [the economy].”
The application also features an artificial intelligence tool that allows users to take a picture of each commodity they have and classifies it according to what type of item it is, what it is made of and enters it to the commodity list. Once the system has calculated what fee needs to be paid according to the product, a Quick Response Code (QR) will be generated that is supposed to be presented at specifically designated VIP lines at airports.
