For the first time in Hunan Province, an online public auction of processing-trade leftover materials was clinched on Taobao’s Ali asset disposal platform on July 24 (https://zc-paimai.taobao.com). This online auction was held by a Hunan-based processing-trade company for 15 tons of waste fragments of glass to be sold domestically. Through 3 rounds of bidding, these waste glass was sold at 2,518 yuan with a premium rate of 60%.    

As Customs-controlled goods, the leftover materials from processing trade must be sold domestically or be destroyed in line with relevant regulations. In the first half of 2019, Hunan Province had 321 processing-trade companies registered with Changsha Customs, and their export-import value totaled 37.74 billion yuan, with domestic sales of leftover materials totaling 31 million yuan. To facilitate the domestic sales, Changsha Customs has begun to promote the online auction management mechanism this year.

According to the Customs authority, over the web-based auction platform, the buy and sale of the leftover materials can be conducted in an open, orderly and transparent manner; additionally, the Customs can determine a dutiable value on the basis of a real auction price and also can make duty-free write-off for the leftover materials if the auction fails to give their transaction prices, thus reducing the transactional costs of processing-trade companies.