Government involvement is the main cause for the EDI acceptance
in Southeast Asian countries (United Nation of Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and Pacific - UNESCAP, 1996). This
is significantly different from the EDI developments in the western
countries in which private sector involvement in EDI is substantial
(UNESCAP, 1996). As an initial step to spur EDI implementation in
private sector, the Malaysian Government has imposed all companies
that engage in international trade to implement EDI by doing
electronic customs declarations through CIS (Customs Information
System) DagangNet. For this, the Government also spent over RM
300 million to fully implement EDI nationwide (Star, 2003 December
3). Nevertheless, such implementation is not successful and it has
been claimed that
“EDI is not yet fully implemented even though it
had been initiated since late 1990s, besides electronic data is also
still not recognized for legal customs declaration purposes even if it
was meant for paperless and electronic customs declarations”
(Star,
2003 December 3). To date, there are dual customs declarations, both
electronic and manual, in practices where the sole typical electronic
transaction is registration of the customs form (Jimmy, 2005; Star,
2005 July 11). This is in contrast with electronic customs declarations by other countries such as Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore where
there is a full electronic declaration including electronic payment
for declarations charges (Jimmy, 2005; Star, 2005 July 11; Chau,
2001)