Clearance Of Goods Complicated For Importers At Odessa And Ilyichevsky Ports

Difficulties involving clearance of goods at the Odessa seaport have reached a critical level, say importers. At the demand of the Ministry of Revenue and Duties, all containers being imported are subject to 100% scanning while GPS seals must be installed on transit cargo and supplies going to Kiev, the Kommersant Ukraine newspaper writes.

Despite having the capacity to process an average of 500 containers of imported goods per day, the number that the Odessa port processes has now fallen to 200 per day, Viktor Berestenko, the head of the Odessa regional trade union of forwarders, told the publication.

According to the trade union, compared with about 60 trucks waiting in line for processing one week ago, a five-kilometer queue of 550 trucks has now been formed in front of the Euroterminal at the port. According to the director of a logistics company, there are up to 400 vehicles at the Ilyichevsky seaport.

Before customs clearance, each truck must wait in line to enter the port, undergo weighing without its cargo, load its container and undergo weighing again, wait in line for scanning, and possibly undergo physical inspection of its cargo. Cargos are processed only if customs officials have GPS seals. Even if 10 minutes is spent on a single scan, one equipment can scan only 150 vehicles, Berestenko said. Dmytro Serhienko, the chairman of the Odessa regional division of the Association of International Road Carriers, complained that customs clearance was being delayed to 3-4 days, although the procedure previously took four hours.

Carriers and importers say they are incurring daily losses of about UAH 250,000. For example, they have to pay USD 90 per day to use the port’s infrastructure and USD 5-6 per day per container for storage in the first few days, with the fee increasing progressively. The amount paid to a container line for idling vehicles is about USD 70 per day. In addition, the services of a laborer during the loading and unloading of goods for inspection is up to UAH 15,000 per vehicle.

The Ministry of Revenue and Duties attributes its actions to the need to combat smuggling. "We will not stop because there is a positive effect. The average weekly amount by which the cost of goods increased voluntarily - that is, changes in invoices - was about UAH 5 million in October," the ministry said.