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| Monday, 1 July 2013 |
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IATA Agree to Extend Financial Reporting Timeframe |
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Dear All,
We are delighted to advise that following a concerted effort, the global IATA Cargo Agency Conference body have approved an extension to the financial reporting time-frame for the Australian IATA Cargo Agency Program. A number of AFIF members had raised their concerns about this matter and whilst IATA Australia were sympathetic to the varying reasons for late reporting, they were unable to extend the limitations based on IATA rules enshrined in their 'Resolutions'. AFIF then approached the local IATA Cargo Executive Council (of which AFIF' Paul Golland is Chairman and forwarding representatives have equal numbers with airlines) requesting a change. Our request was agreed and submitted to the global IATA Cargo Agency Conference (CAC) with a recommendation to amend the Resolution. This was passed in their most recent meeting. The process now requires IATA to 'file' this with appropriate Government authorities, following which it will come into effect on October 1st, 2013.
The amended resolution 809 now reads:
Section 2.4 Financial Standing
2.4.5 the Agency Administrator shall, on his own initiative or at the request of a Member, conduct annual examinations of the financial standing of Agents. He may request and the Agent concerned shall be under obligation to furnish, within a period of five month after the financial year end as advised by the agent, the documents prescribed in the Agents Handbook deemed necessary by the Agency Administrator to conduct such examination. Failure by the Agent to submit such documents as prescribed may be grounds for the Agency Administrator to suspend the Agent from CASS where applicable and/or initiate review of the Agent by the Agency Commissioner.
One of the most important aspects of this change, apart from the extension to 5 months beyond the end of the financial year that applies to your organisation, is that if the Agent (Intermediary / Forwarder) is still not in a position to submit the financial report on request, the IATA Agency Administrator now has the flexibility not to automatically suspend the Agent from CASS. In the past, there has been no such flexibility within the Rules. This has been achieved by replacing the word 'shall' with 'may' in the relevant section of the Resolution, above.
We trust that you will appreciate the significance of this important achievement in fairness for our industry sector. Kind regards,
Brian Lovell |