The Odesa Customs will process only goods from the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, and Australia and reject Chinese and Turkish goods because they are "a potential source of corruption." The Odesa region’s Governor Mikheil Saakashvili stated this in comments to the Den newspaper, the Ukrinform news agency reports.
"We want to perform customs clearance of goods only from the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia because their origin and the prices specified in the declarations for the goods are 100% confirmed. However, we will reject Chinese and Turkish goods because it is impossible to find the real declarations for them. Let other customs clear them because they are a potential source of corruption. We will perform customs clearance of all cargoes when we launch electronic customs on 1 March 2016," Saakashvili said.
According to him, several steps agreed with the central office of the State Fiscal Service and aimed at completely changing the operations of the Odesa regional customs have been proposed. In particular, these steps include maximum simplification of the filing of customs declarations and reduction of the time spent on customs clearance of containers to 15 minutes. In total, not more than one hour will be spent on customs clearance and only 5-7% of goods will be inspected physically.
In addition, Odesa is awaiting adoption of a law on elimination of customs brokers and transfer of their functions to customs officials. The regional customs office will direct part of the funds generated from such services into a special fund for increasing the salaries of customs officials.
"Smuggling is probably not completely blocked, but there is generally no corruption at the Odesa customs. All these flows have now switched to other customs, primarily the Kiev customs, where customs clearance of goods is performed at lower prices," Saakashvili said.
