How does a Mirsal 2 customs declaration work in Dubai?

Dubai Customs describes Mirsal 2 as a combination of IT services and Dubai Customs processes and procedures, provided through an electronic environment in an automated and paperless way. Its own publication titles it the electronic customs clearance system. Dubai Customs launched it on 24 March 2010.

The name is worth checking before you use it in writing. Dubai Customs’ 2026 announcements say “the Mirsal system”. The portal path printed in its January 2026 announcement of the Digital MAKASA procedure (a Dubai Customs process name, used here only as it appears) reads “Mirsal II, then Declaration”. Its publications say Mirsal 2. All three are the same thing, and nothing in the Dubai Customs or Dubai Trade material checked on 3 September 2026 announces a replacement. The Dubai Trade service page itself is headed “Submit Customs Declaration”, and uses the Mirsal name only in passing.

Dubai Customs says the system collects customs duties, runs the risk management cycle, and connects other administrations in the Dubai trade supply chain with electronic messages for inspection and clearance.

There are three submission channels.

• Dubai Trade, the portal itself.
• Business to Government, which Dubai Customs offers to clients with high volumes and frequent transactions.
• Customs Bureau Services, for non-commercial customers such as private individuals and government entities.

Dubai Customs states that commercial clients shall only use the online channel, so a forwarder has two real routes: the portal, or a system-to-system connection.

Mirsal 2 is not open to anyone with a browser. The Mirsal 2 FAQ that Dubai Trade hosts puts it plainly. Anyone registered with Dubai Customs as the authorised person to import, export or transit goods through Dubai can use Mirsal 2 to submit goods declarations.

Registration runs on Dubai Trade as a service called Request Business Registration. You give Dubai Customs a valid licence, the business address, the activities, the facilities and the business group, with documents. Dubai Customs issues a unique identification code called the business code, and its validity is tied to the validity of your licence. A lapsed licence takes the code with it, and the code is renewed only after the licensing authority has renewed the licence.

The documents are:

• a trade licence copy
• an authorised person passport copy
• an Emirates ID copy
• residence permit and labour card copies, which Dubai Trade’s registration panel also asks for

A new registration is AED 100 and a renewal AED 25, with an AED 20 Knowledge and Innovation fee on any service cost of AED 50 and above. The fee is charged per business type, and Customs Brokers, and Clearing and Forwarding, are types of their own.

Then come the people. Once the code exists, an administrator adds the people who will file, each with a Broker Representative role, which is what opens Mirsal 2 services for a clearing agent (a cargo owner's own filer gets a Trader Representative role). Dubai Customs says to apply for a digital certificate for everyone who needs to submit customs declarations on Dubai Trade. From 10 May 2026 it also allows UAE Pass login instead, provided the account is Advanced (SOP2) or Qualified (SOP3). A Basic (SOP1) account, created with only an email address and a mobile number, cannot submit. The digital certificate mechanism continues alongside until further notice.

If you clear for somebody else, there is a second permission on top of your own. Dubai Customs’ business association service lets the owner of the goods authorise a broker code electronically, decide which declaration types that broker may submit, and set how long the authorisation lasts. An owner who turns on self-declaration reserves submission to themselves. The broker licence is a separate application under Customs Policy No. 17 of 2008, and Dubai Customs holds the broker responsible for the accuracy of the details contained in the goods declaration.

Dubai Customs asks you to name the regime before anything else. Its Customer Guide lists five: import, export, transit, temporary admission and transfer. Dubai Trade prices them separately, from AED 15 for an import, export or transit to AED 100 for a temporary admission, plus the AED 20 Knowledge and Innovation fee.

The type inside the regime decides the work. The Customer Guide lists eleven import types alone, split by where the goods come from and whether the import is for consumption, for re-export or after a temporary admission. The Mirsal 2 FAQ that Dubai Trade hosts, dated 30 July 2009, prints thirty-eight types in all. That document is old, so read it as the shape of the catalogue rather than today’s exact list.

What separates the types is the duty position and the evidence you owe afterwards. Import to local pays duty. Import for re-export suspends it against a deposit, refunded only if the goods leave within six months, with customs inspection and exit certification. Where goods leave a free zone without proof of export, Dubai Customs says it charges ten per cent of the value. Transit through Dubai is permitted for thirty days from the date the declaration is cleared.

Dubai Trade’s service page gives the short answer: invoice, packing list, certificate of origin and a permit from restriction entities. The Customer Guide gives the long answer, one list per declaration type, and warns that requirements vary according to the cargo channel.

Two rules sit underneath that table. The delivery order must have been issued by the shipping agent before the declaration is submitted, so it is a precondition rather than an attachment. And duty is calculated on the value of the goods plus freight, insurance and other charges to the port of destination, so the freight figure on your file is part of the declaration.

The paperwork does not end when the declaration clears. Declarations and attachments must reach the designated Customs Office within fourteen days, then cost AED 50 for each day of delay up to ninety days, and no refund claim for duty or deposit is accepted until they are in. The documents themselves have to be kept for five years, under Article 127 of the Common Customs Law of the GCC States.

Clearing before the cargo arrives is allowed, and it is the whole game. Dubai Customs says a customer can complete clearance before the goods arrive, provided all the essential information is on the declaration. Whether you clear early is a question about your documents, not about the system.

Dubai Customs does not publish a ranked list of rejection reasons. It does publish the rules that stop a declaration, and most of them are about a document that has not arrived yet.

• The air waybill has to reach Customs first. Dubai Customs validates the air waybill number given in import declarations against what the carrier submitted, and expects the carrier, the air cargo agent or the courier company to file that information first. Its announcement said the system would begin by showing a warning, and that after the awareness period it shall not allow declaration submission if the corresponding air waybill has not been submitted beforehand.
• The delivery order has to exist. For sea cargo the delivery order must have been issued by the shipping agent before the declaration goes in, and it is on the required-documents list for imports, transit and temporary admission alike. It is what lets the declaration be submitted at all.
• The tariff code has to be one the trade flow allows. The UAE is moving to twelve-digit Integrated Customs Tariff codes in phases under Customs Notice 10/2025, starting with shipments destined for the GCC. Several flows sit outside that and stay on eight digits, including moves between Dubai free zones, transhipments and transit trade. Using twelve-digit codes outside the permitted trades, Dubai Customs said, would be in violation of the notice and may attract penalties. Customs Notice 02/2026 then extended the eight-digit flexibility until further notice, so check which notice is in force before anyone argues with a rejection.
• Amendments are charged, and sometimes refused. Dubai Trade prices an amendment at AED 25 and a cancellation at AED 25, and adds a fine of AED 500 on amendment of invoice-level goods information. Amendment is not allowed where there is a collected claim, where the declaration is under audit, where a MAKASA has been issued, or where its time limit has expired. Cancellation is not allowed once the cargo has been released.
• There is now a way out of the AED 500. From 25 January 2026 Dubai Customs waives it on sea cargo where the declaration went in before the vessel arrived and the amendment was completed within seventy-two hours of arrival. The facility is intended to encourage customers to arrange all necessary shipping documents, such as the bill of lading and delivery order, and to submit declarations in advance of vessel arrival. The regulator is describing a document chase and putting AED 500 on winning it.
• Late documents, wrong declarations and a missing permit. The Customer Guide’s fines appendix prints a fine on a wrong declaration of AED 500, on top of the AED 50 a day for late documents. Restricted goods need a permit from the competent authority. And a declaration clears in seconds only where Customs do not feel the need to intervene and verify further.

Go back over the table and mark the documents your own office creates. There will not be many. The declaration type is a fact about the shipment. The tariff code follows the goods. Everything else is a document somebody else has to send you. The invoice from the shipper. The certificate of origin from a chamber. The delivery order from the line.

Submitting the declaration is a short piece of work. Gathering what goes into it is not. It runs from the booking to the vessel, across offices that keep different weekends, and in most companies one coordinator carries the whole list in their head. Dubai Customs has effectively priced that chase at AED 500.

FreighAI does not submit declarations, in Mirsal or anywhere else. Direct customs filing stays in the system you already use for it. What it works on is the chase around the declaration. Spots what is missing in an enquiry and drafts the email asking for it. Follow-ups, chasers and reminders happen on their own, on the same conversation.

The declaration is still prepared and signed by whoever is licensed to do it, and it still leaves through Dubai Trade or your own B2G connection. Two questions are worth putting to any supplier who says it helps with this:

• 01Show us a booking where the certificate of origin and the delivery order are both missing. What does the system send, who does it go to, and when does it chase again?
• 02When the shipping line releases the delivery order at nine at night, who is told, and what does the person still have to retype into the declaration?