ICEGATE stands for the Indian Customs and Central Excise Electronic Commerce/Electronic Data interchange (EC/EDI) Gateway. ICEGATE is a portal that provides e-filing services to the trade and cargo carriers and other clients of Customs & Central Excise Department (collectively called trading partner). At present, about 8500 users are registered with ICEGATE.

ICEGATE is an infrastructure project that fulfils the department's EC/EDI and data communication requirements. Through this facility the department offers a host of services, including electronic filing of Bill of Entry( import goods declaration) and Shipping Bills (export goods declaration) and related electronic messages between Customs and the trading partners using communication facilities (E-mail, Web-upload & FTP) including the communication protocols commonly used on the internet. The airlines and shipping agents can file manifests on the internet filed using this facility. Besides, data is exchanged between Customs and the various regulatory and licensing agencies such as DGFT, RBI, Ministry of Steel and DGCIS. The National Import database (NIDB) and Export Commodity Database (ECDB) for Directorate of valuation are also being serviced through ICEGATE. All electronic documents/ messages being handled by the ICEGATE are processed at the Customs' end by the Indian Customs EDI System (ICES), which is running at 40 customs locations. Department has embarked upon Centralization of its infrastructure and in due course all customs locations will be shifted to centralized infrastructure hosted at Data Centre. 5 Custom locations at Dadri have already been moved to the Data Centre.

The ICEGATE also provides for 24X7 helpdesk facility for its trading partners. To ensure secure filing, it is proposed to use digital signatures on Bill of Entry and other documents/ messages to be handled on the gateway.

ICEGATE is working through a MPLS based Wide Area Network (under implementation), linking 582 departments buildings all over the country.

In addition to e-filing, ICEGATE also provides host of other services like E-payment, on-line registration for IPR, Document Tracking status at ICEGATE and ICES, online verification of DEPB/DES/EPCG licences, IE code status, PAN based CHA data and links to various other important websites/information pertaining to Customs business.

Source: www.icegate.gov.in