The Central Board of Excise and Customs ( CBEC) has developed an ‘ integrated declaration’ to incorporate all the information required for import clearance by various government agencies into the electronic format of the bill of entry. This is to be filed electronically at a single entry point, the Customs Gateway. Separate application forms required by different agencies such as the Drugs Controller, Textile Committee, etc, would be dispensed with. This important step to provide the importers a single point interface for clearance of imported goods will go online from April 1, for consignments to be cleared under the Indian Customs EDI Systems but not for clearance of imported goods in the manual mode. The integrated declaration has a portion to capture the text of different types of declarations, undertakings and letters of guarantee, etc, in the form of statements. These statements have been standardised and codified. While giving the integrated declaration, the importer can