The Chairman of the State Customs Committee spoke about the details of the conversation with the President

On September 21, in the evening broadcast of the Belarus 1 TV channel, Chairman of the State Customs Committee Vladimir Orlovsky spoke about the details of the conversation with the President. We offer readers a printed version of the interview.

First of all, the Head of State drew attention to the promotion of Belarusian exports, assistance to our enterprises. Taking into account the position of the collective West, cargo flows were reorganized from the west to the east. This reorientation requires the efforts of many departments, including customs. Registration both at the border and within the country, export-import operations are done as quickly as possible. Currently, import processing takes up to two hours, export – five minutes, transit – ten minutes. Of course, we're not standing still. I reported to the Head of State that new software products are being developed using artificial intelligence, which will read paper documents, compare them with electronic information and help customs officers make decisions. It'll be faster and better. About the system of remote registration when crossing the border - We plan to make this registration even more comfortable. By the end of the year, we will develop a software product (mobile application) so that you can register directly from your phone in an electronic queue for both passenger and freight transport. Belarus has never closed a single checkpoint for a single day. We live in the conditions we have. But we are trying to speed up the passage of the border as much as possible so that citizens do not feel the closure of checkpoints so much. If neighboring countries do open them, we will be ready to work and fully carry out all functions. We have all the infrastructure at these points, we maintain it in working order. Moreover, in some closed checkpoints, employees work on remote clearance of goods (export and import) of our business entities. Thus, the load is distributed throughout the country, that is, goods are processed faster. I would like to divide the law enforcement activities of customs authorities into two conditional areas. The first is economic security. Every year, the tricks of violating customs legislation associated with non-payment of payments, understating payments, are becoming more sophisticated. We try to keep up and improve our technology. This year, for eight months, the import of goods worth 220 million rubles into the country in violation of the legislation was stopped. The second is the safety of citizens. The Head of State paid special attention to this. It is important that no Belarusian is injured in our country. This is the whole range of our capabilities. The car from the cargo flow is not just sent to control, inspection, scanning - we have a whole system: software products, analysts, which allocate particularly risky cars and cargo for additional control. In addition, the law enforcement unit conducts operational-search measures aimed at preventing the import of prohibited substances into the country. This year, we have already identified several cases when our citizens take things when crossing the border to be transferred to friends or even strangers across the border, perhaps for a small fee. We identified five cases when in household appliances, personal belongings were 2-3 kilograms of drugs. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in no case should you take things for transfer across the border to other citizens, because you can get into bad situations. On cooperation with the law enforcement unit – In the process of detecting offenses, we interact with all law enforcement agencies. This year, together with the border service, the channel of export of military equipment to the European Union under the guise of civilian products was stopped. In addition, over eight months of this year, more than 2.5 thousand weapons and ammunition were seized. And some of these offenses were also worked out in cooperation with law enforcement agencies of our country. Grey import is the import of goods into the country that either did not pass customs clearance at all in the EAEU countries, or were imported somewhere in addition to customs control. This is not a budget replenishment, harm to legal importers. And, more importantly, the damage to our producers. For us, one of the main tasks is to counter the import of gray imports. This year, about 800 such violations were stopped, totaling about 76 million rubles. All these goods, after detection, were naturally subject to taxation with the receipt of due contributions to the budget. If the goods go through the western direction, it is subject to customs clearance and customs control both at the border and in logistics centers. And if from the eastern direction, mobile groups work, which prevent imports directly along the Russian border. Detained goods are placed for registration in customs warehouses, temporary storage warehouses, after which the process of their legalization is underway. Belarusian business entities are definitely the most active, they are developing regulatory documents together with us. In order to communicate with business, there are several sites. The main one is our public advisory council, directly under the Customs Committee and in regional customs offices. Interaction on public advisory councils allows us, firstly, to work out draft normative acts qualitatively, and secondly, to have feedback from business about already working acts. Another of our platforms is the annual conference, which brings together business representatives of the five EAEU countries, the Eurasian Economic Commission, the Eurasian Court, academia, customs officials of the five countries. At the conference in September, we discussed the third package of amendments to the Customs Code.