Second Stage of Developing Union State’s Single Automatic Information System to Continue in 2008-2010

Belarusian and Russian customs must speak one language, including the computer language, - claimed Vladimir Goshin, Deputy Chairperson of Belarus’ State Customs Committee in an interview to “The Soyuz” newspaper.

Belarusian and Russian customs must speak one language, including the computer language, - claimed Vladimir Goshin, Deputy Chairperson of Belarus’ State Customs Committee in an interview to “The Soyuz” newspaper.

“The customs area of the Union State is vast and it’s already impossible to solve serious problems without modern information technologies”, - he thinks. Traffic flows, compliance with the rules of goods’ import and export and many other things need to be monitored. The representative of the State Customs Committee believes that for these purposes the customs processes, starting on the territory of one country and ending in the other country (e.g. temporary importation of vehicles), should be made automatic. The new programme “Realization of Information Technologies of Common Customs Processes on the Territories of the Union State Member-States” for 2008-2010 makes provisions for that.

Mr. Goshin noted that it will be the second stage of development of the single automatic information system of the Union State’s Customs Committee. “As a result the time of goods’ customs processing will decrease by 10, or even 20-25 per cent, freight will pass the border faster and the Russian and Belarusian budget revenues will increase”, – supposes Deputy Chairperson of the State Customs Committee. According to him, today customs processing of exported goods takes 15 minutes maximum in Belarus, because there is information about them in electronic format. Customs officers just compare the documents, presented by the driver, with the electronic variant and fills in 4-5 fields. “But customs processing takes at least 40 minutes in Russia so far, because it is necessary to enter by hand all information, concerning the goods, into computer. When the new Union programme will be carried out, Russian freight forwarders will spend two times less time on customs procedures. Consequently, the queues on the border will lessen too”, – claimed Mr. Goshin.