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The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try (MTI) says fail­ures to com­ply with laws and reg­u­la­tions are re­spon­si­ble for the de­lays scrap met­al deal­ers have been com­plain­ing about.

In a state­ment ad­dress­ing con­cerns raised by the Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day, the MTI said its Trade Li­cence Unit (TLU) can process an ap­pli­ca­tion for an ex­port li­cence for scrap met­al in as lit­tle as one day. How­ev­er, it not­ed that de­lays of­ten arise due to deal­ers' non-com­pli­ance, in­clud­ing the sub­mis­sion of in­com­plete or in­ac­cu­rate doc­u­men­ta­tion.

TTSI­DA has warned that the cur­rent ex­port sys­tem could force mem­bers to shut down. Its pres­i­dent, Al­lan Fer­gu­son, ex­plained that af­ter sub­mit­ting doc­u­ments to the MTI, deal­ers typ­i­cal­ly wait three to sev­en weeks for a re­sponse or ex­port li­cences to be grant­ed. Vice Pres­i­dent Er­ros See­jat­tan added that the process in­volves ap­prox­i­mate­ly two weeks to ac­cu­mu­late the re­quired amount of ma­te­ri­als, a min­i­mum of three weeks to ob­tain a li­cence, and an­oth­er two weeks or more to se­cure an in­spec­tion be­fore load­ing can oc­cur.