Introduction to IDF
- It is the responsibility of an importer or his/her appointed Customs Agent to register an IDF for every consignment that is expected to be brought into Kenya.
- The IDF is a pre-importation declaration and is considered a base document because it is first submitted before Customs clearance procedures for imported goods can commence.
- In practice, an IDF incorporates a declaration value (DV1) or form C36.
- Once an IDF is submitted, it is assigned a unique consignment reference (UCR) number. On average, it takes 5-30 minutes to create an IDF, depending on the number of items in a consignment, competence of the Declarant, network stability and speed.
- There are import goods that require pre-importation permits while some goods do not require pre-importation permits. In the case where pre-importation permits are required, the IDF once created moves to “pending approval” status to allow for Partner Government Agencies (PGAs) to process permits.
- Once the PGAs finish processing of permits, the status changes to “approved”. Example of goods that require pre-importation permits include plants, food items, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals.
- In the case of consignments that do not require pre-importation permits, such as motor vehicles and machineries, the IDF changes to “approved” status once it is created.
- Goods are described in three ways in the IDF: commercial goods description; tariff description; and structured/ complementary data description.