The US-based e-commerce platform iHerb should follow import regulations, the Customs Administration said yesterday, after the online retailer suspended services in Taiwan due to what it called stringent customs procedures.
The agency said its customs enforcement system has remained unchanged and that iHerb should work with licensed customs brokers and courier services to have its goods cleared through customs.
iHerb, which offers more than 30,000 health and natural products, last week announced without warning that it was suspending its services in Taiwan.
It said that Taiwan’s new customs clearance processes, customs checking flows and rigorous inspections have had a major adverse effect on its time-sensitive shipments to the nation.
The company said it is working to find a solution and would resume its services in Taiwan once the issues are resolved.
However, the agency said iHerb’s complaints did not address the main issue.
The problem occurred last month, when iHerb improperly used a simplified customs declaration procedure to clear six batches of more than 10,000 products, it said, adding that the goods were intercepted at customs.
Imports of health foods and medicines must be cleared using regular customs procedures, rather than the simplified process used by some courier services, and have all related documents attached, the agency said, citing regulations.
The regulations have not been changed, and iHerb’s shipments were not intercepted because of new customs enforcement measures, it said.
The agency said that it had asked express couriers to convey the message to iHerb that Taiwan has not changed its customs regulations and that if it used licensed customs brokers that file import declarations in accordance with relevant regulations, its shipments would be cleared smoothly.
However, if the company insists on improperly declaring the goods being imported, similar incidents would likely happen again, it said.
People who buy health food or health supplements in the form of capsules and tablets from overseas for personal use are not required to apply for an import permit from the Food and Drug Administration or the customs department, the agency said.
However, the amount of such goods that can be imported for personal use is capped at 12 units (bottles, boxes, cans or bags) per item, and the total number of products in a single shipment is capped at 36 units, it said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS