The new Import System of the Argentine Republic (SIRA), which replaces the Comprehensive Import Monitoring System (SIMI), came into force this Monday.
Through the new scheme provided by the Federal Administration of Public Revenues (AFIP) in conjunction with the Ministry of Commerce, it will seek to give greater order and complete traceability to operations and avoid cases of overbilling, abusive use of injunctions and other irregular mechanisms. .
Among the reasons that prompted its formulation, are the numerous inconsistencies of the importers detected under the SIMI, such as the use of abusive practices in the filing of injunctions to avoid it.
All the information of the SIRA -which will monitor in real time- will be made available to the member organizations of the National Regime of the Single Window for Argentine Foreign Trade (Vucea), which They must pronounce themselves within a period not exceeding 60 calendar days from the registration in the system.
After these are pronounced, the AFIP will notify importers of the news, and where appropriate, the observations of these agencies.
Declarations made through the SIRA will be valid for 90 dayscounted from the date on which the imports have the status of “departure”, and may be made official prior to the arrival of the merchandise to the territory in order to carry out controls in advance.
At the time of the declaration, the AFIP will analyze the situation of the subject -including if it has breaches or formal irregularities- and its risk profile, contemplating, among other elements, if the importer carried out operations of overinvoicing, underinvoicing or “abusive practices” with the interposition of injunctions.
In the same way, their financial economic capacity will be analyzed.
The new controls will be complemented by the creation of a Single Foreign Trade Current Account, through which the State will be able to carry out real-time monitoring of the financial and physical flow of foreign trade.
In this sense, the entities authorized to operate in the Free Exchange Market must record the amount in pesos of each of the operations exchange rates related to imports, at the time it is made.
Meanwhile, importers must report the term in calendar days between the official dispatch and the estimated date of access to the Free Exchange Market to make import payments.
Another point of the new system will be the creation of a Monitoring and Evaluation Committee of the SIRA, which will be made up of the AFIP, the Ministry of Commerce and the Central Bank (BCRA).
The BCRA will be authorized to “adopt and propose the necessary measures to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the control actions coordinated between the different State agencies”, according to the joint general resolution 5271/2022 that established the SIMI.
As part of the transition to the new system, all those operations in the “officialized” or “observed” status of the SIMI -that is, that are pending approval-, were cancelled, and importers must register them again through the SIRA.
Meanwhile, those already approved and in “exit” status will remain valid.
