Customs Committee plans to ease import-export operations at the border

ASTANA. April 11. KAZINFORM Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Karim Massimov held on April 9 a regular session of the Government to discuss issues of improving the customs administration of goods and the preparation process for the spring sowing campaign in the country.

Speaking at the meeting, Chairman of the Customs Control Committee of the Ministry of Finance Mazhit Yessenbayev presented the main directions of modernising the country's customs service in the nearest future, including by reducing the number of documents required at the border entry points to the minimum, the Kazakh MFA's online publication reads.

"If today one needs to provide 13 documents for export operations and 12 documents for import operations, the number of documents will be reduced to four for both actions with the introduction of our initiative," Yessenbayev said.

With the aim of ensuring transparency of the customs clearance, the Committee has proposed to introduce an integrated customs tariff, i.e. a systematised and codified list of information about all tariff and non-tariff measures applied for import, export or transit, including all state requirements for particular goods.

The Committee has also proposed to transfer the rights for levying indirect taxes such as VAT, excise taxes, royalties, to the tax authorities.

The government session also reviewed the measures on optimising the risk management system, introduction of public services to the customs administration process, particularly the customs operations at the border entry points and customs clearance.

In his report, Yessenbayev noted the work within the Single Economic Space as one of the important directions.

"The integration process of the customs-transit system of Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus is under way: the procedures of confirming the removal of exported goods from the territory of the Customs Union is being automated, the exchange of information on registered goods among the control and analytical centres of the customs bodies are being implemented, and the working groups are still dealing with unification of the national risks management system," Mazhit Yessenbayev said.

Following the report, Karim Massimov approved the abovementioned measures on modernisation and instructed to continue the work on upgrading the customs service. He also charged the Customs Control Committee with all the functions of phytosanitary and veterinary control at the borders.