Work underway to provide customs with modern control means

/By AzerNews/

By Amina Nazarli

The development of an appropriate legislation is among the main priorities of Azerbaijan’s State Customs Committee, Aydin Aliyev, SCC Chairman, Lieutenant General of Customs Service said.

He said the SCC made a lot of work to improve the normative legal framework in the customs field in 2014.

“In particular, ‘The rules of placing processing products under special customs procedure’, ‘The rules governing the activities of customs representative offices’ and ‘The rules of placing transit goods under the special customs procedure’ were developed and approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, while a number of regulations were included to the state registry,” Aliyev told Trendon January 29.

He noted that the SCC and its local structures took measures to improve the customs controls in the export and import operations, strengthening the fight against smuggling and customs rules violations.

“In this sense, the mobile customs offices, which simplify the control, are of great importance,” he said. “Last year, the activity of such offices unveiled over 352 cases of deviation of vehicles from the route or attempts for such deviation. Operative measures were taken in regards to such trucks.”

The SCC chairman also said that in order to speed up the operations on customs control and increase their efficiency, work is underway to provide the customs authorities with modern technical control means.

He also noted that measures adopted for the current year include an action plan for the development of SCC in 2012-2016.

“Relevant work will be made for executing the tasks set in the development concept ‘Azerbaijan 2020: A Look into the Future’, to further improve the ‘single window’ principle at the customs checkpoints in the country,” said Aliyev.

The “single window” principle has been in use at customs in Azerbaijan since January 1, 2009.

Aliyev noted that in 2015, the government is expected to fully automate the customs procedures and to adopt measures for ensuring the timely consideration of citizens’ appeals. It will also make customs control in line with modern requirements, simplify customs procedures, strengthen financial discipline and combat customs offences, use widely modern information systems, expand the number of e-services, use the e-signature and VAIS system, and ensure the SCC’s integration in the state program "Electronic Azerbaijan".