Government 2008 review: customs policy and administrative reform

ASTANA. January 14. KAZINFORM. What were the main priorities of the Government in 2008? What are the main indicators of socio-economic development in this period? Kazinform offers its readers Government?s referral information on customs policy and administrative reform.

Customs policy Following the results of 11 months of 2008 the customs duties and taxes in the budget revenue was KZT 850,7 bln, it is KZT 275,2 bln or 47,8% more than in the previous year. In order to improve the production technology of the customs processing of goods and vehicles, increase of customs procedure effectiveness, the transition from the existing three-stage customs processing procedure to a one-stage processing took place ? ?one step? system for registering and issuing customs declarations. In order to minimize the shadow turnover of Chinese goods and to protect the interests of law-abiding citizens a specific rate of customs duties is introduced at the amount of 0,6 Euro per 1 kg and safe packages are used for the transfer of shippping documents. In order to cut down all kinds of entrepreneurs? checking a mechanism of preventing the violations of law was developed, which will also increase the number of bona fide participants of foreign economic activity, since it will simply become not profitable for them to violate the laws A proposal to improve the position of Kazakhstan in terms of ?international trade? in the rating ?Doing business? it is planned to reduce the number and time of customs documents processing from 3 to 1. This also saves time and money of entrepreneurs. The integrated control was introduced on the border, from January 1, 2009 the functions of phyto - sanitary, veterinary and transport control are given to the customs service, there will be only two controlling services at the checkpoints. In this regard the functions of the Committee Operating Management Center in Astana were expanded for the remote monitoring and all regulatory and law enforcement officials. In order to take efficient measures to prevent inflation rate the following measures are taken: 1. In order to saturate the domestic market with food, vegetables, fruits and consumer goods, as well as to prevent unnecessary increase in the prices of these commodities, the customs authorities place information on the average import prices of the this goods in the national and regional periodicals compared to retail prices. 2. In order to establish reliable conditional prices of imported goods, mainly on the food products, the Agreements were signed with customs services of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (main suppliers of vegetables and fruits) on mutual provision of information on average prices for the separate goods. 3. In order to monitor the market prices every month the price data on the import of food products to Kazakhstan are forwarded to regional akimats, Astana and Almaty, Ministry of Industry and Trade and Ministry of Agriculture so that the relevant measures be taken and just for information. Within the administrative reform the authorities are separated between different levels of the government in protecting environment, disaster management, sanitary and epidemiological welfare of the population