Businesspeople point out poorer quality of customs procedures in the second quarter of 2011. The results of the Customs Index presented recently by the European Business Association (EBA) prove it. They interrogated 94 companies making part of the EBA and representing the international companies working in Ukraine.
After the customs regulations improved at the beginning of 2011 business hoped that the simplification would continue. However, according to the deputy director for social studies of the InMind company Iryna Chernova the second quarter reminds of 2010 with some worse elements. According to the respondents, two indicators grew significantly. In particular, the number of goods subject to customs examination increased up to 41 percent (26 percent in the first quarter). Overall 33 percent of respondents were refused to appraise the customs value of the goods according to the contract prices (27 percent in the first quarter). The time needed for the clearance of one parcel insignificantly increased up to three days. The number of goods whose classification codes were changed by the customs officers (agricultural production, medications, construction materials, etc.) increased. The number of documents goods need to pass the border remained nearly the same. The situation with corruption is slightly worse than half a year ago but much better than in 2010, she says. In general, Chernova says that every third interrogated company complained about this problem. “The conditions of customs clearance for small and medium-sized businesses are getting worse: all the indicators significantly grew in this segment,” Chernova summed up this unpleasant tendency. The third of 94 interrogated companies are small or medium-sized business.
Though the customs quickly reacted to businesspeople’s complaints it did not make possible to resolve the problems and the negative tendency, co-head of the EBA customs committee Denys Shendryk continued. According to him, entrepreneurs remembered the second quarter of 2011 because of refusals to clear the goods for the contract prices and clearance delays, especially, at the end of the months.
The tense situation and delays in the ports make the importers send their goods to the Polish and German ports, co-head of the EBA customs committee Oleksandr Lazariev said. He specified that up to 50 percent of the goods from the Ukrainian ports went to three other ports: Hamburg, Klaipeda, and Gdynia. As a result, the Ukrainian ports lost their profit and the imported goods got more expensive since the price of delivery grew in average by a thousand dollars, he said.
Shendryk is concerned about the objective appraisal of customs value. This problem cannot be resolved through the single database of customs value for goods opened by the State Customs Service of Ukraine. “It has been opened but it is globally informative… It has a very large price range,” he specified.
According to the EBA executive director Anna Derevianko, customs procedures can be simplified if a very radical step is taken. She explains that the customs should be released of their fiscal function. Today the customs have to fulfill the plan of budget filling every month.
The Day asked the head of the State Customs Service of Ukraine to comment on the attitude of the business environment towards the customs procedures and to answer their burning questions. Read the answers in the exclusive interview in the forthcoming issues of The Day.
