Ten months after its launch, the automated import system (AIS) continues to cause issues for customs agents and importers, the agents association said on Tuesday.

Head of the association, Christos Akaros said that their earlier concerns had been confirmed, with the system repeatedly causing “technical malfunctions, outages and delays.”

These issues, he said, translated into delayed customs clearances, additional storage costs, as well as delays in deliveries, loss of productive working hours and put pressure on the entire supply chain, having tripled the regular customs clearance time.

“The poor planning, the wrong priorities and the poor management of the project before its final implementation in September 2025, put the customs office in an electronic maze and unfortunately involved customs agents, shipping agents, freight forwarders and indirectly importers, who are waiting days to receive their cargoes,” Akaros said.

He attributed the problems to both the software and design issues, as well as programming and project management, noting that while the system complied with applicable legislation, it failed to bring feasible results.

“Those who made the decisions to formulate the system’s specifications had to take into account the lack of personnel that is consuming the customs department and the entire state body,” he said.

He added that as per the new system, 85 per cent of the volume of information is entered by customs agents, 10 per cent by shipping agents and freight forwarders and only 5 per cent by the customs department, which exercises the relevant controls.

Recalling that the association had not been requested to contribute to the formulation of the specifications and the workflow of the new system, he said that this led to problems that appeared later in the application of the system.

“When the primary users and front-line operators are not meaningfully involved from the outset, problems that are overlooked during the specification phase surface later in production, and by then, correcting them is more expensive, more difficult, more time-consuming, and sometimes completely impossible,” he said.

According to Akaros, the association has submitted a detailed list of technical and practical issues along with recommendations for corrections and improvements in October 2025, however, the majority of the problems persisted.