Customs will no longer be a tedious crossing to entrepreneurs (importers and exporters), but a point utterly in their service, by significantly simplifying the procedures, providing information and detaching direct relationship with the customs officer. This is thanks to the implementation of the new online system for customs procedures.
Prime Minister Edi Rama accompanied by Minister of Finance and Economy, Arben Ahmetaj paid a visit today at the premises of the General Directorate of Customs where he got acquainted to the way this cutting edge digital system functions.
General Director of Customs, Belinda Ikonomi explained that establishment of this state of the art system avoids customs officers’ physical presence and contact with entrepreneurs, by reducing significantly corruption possibilities and completely removing paperwork documentation. “This office will undertake all customs valuations in the system. To date, agents have communicated directly with customs officers and submitted all paperwork. As soon as we provide online declarations, it means that customs officers will automatically be able to see everything in the system and make a customs valuation.”
While Minister Ahmetaj emphasized that unification in compliance to customs valuation methodology will be enabled through this system, which did not meet certain standards until yesterday. “There has been a problem in the territory, which due to field evaluations there were made assessments and not standards. Hence to the same code, there was a different rating in Kapshtice, for example, and a different rating in Durres. The unified center removes, firstly, the direct relationship between customs officer and entrepreneurship, eliminates paperwork documents and standardizes the entire codes handled at this center. As a result, service speed – in the frame of deregulation and simplification of procedures – is many times greater,” he said.
To Prime Minister Rama, what customs offers now is a historic downturn of the past, a radical transformation, which must be irreversible. “What must be done with determination in order to make the system fully operational is as similar as all online systems. Nowadays we have hundreds of online systems, due to huge investments and attention we have devoted to, but their use is still very low, not only because of a lack of knowledge and information but also due to the alternative. It implies that the traditional way is still preferred while the same has happened to countries that have undergone this revolution a long time ago and to this day are leaders in the world, such as Estonia and so on. In this regard, a crystal clear message must be given; there is no other way. The traditional method will no longer be allowed. While there will no longer be a love and sins story between importers, exporters and customs officers, because customs officers will be within the system’s brain, working as they function here, throughout the system and follow the whole process as an observing eye and not as a hand that gives and takes. This process’ irreversibility should be very clear to everyone. Businesses need to understand clearly that a very short term is the ultimate deadline. This is a historic transformation because it removes a huge burden from the bureaucratic point of view, from the time point of view, stress, and all that has been a torment for many years. To customs officers it is the transition to another practice level. Certainly, customs officers will perform a much alleviated job from the distress viewpoint, within this new system, but also a much more qualified one in terms of being freed of corruption and even obstacles. It is a great relieve, it is an utterly fundamental transformation.
