ODESA. Nov 3 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Head of Odesa customs center Yulia Marushevska has signed a resolution that permits customs clearance for goods imported from 30 countries to be carried out at the contract price if the goods come with a certificate of origin.
Marushevska wrote on her Facebook page that this concerns the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the U.S.
“First, in national customs practice, the benefit of the doubt is given to business. We’re expecting that with the introduction of this relaxed approach, goods flow will increase. This resolution will also help to remove manipulations of the definition of the customs value,” she said.
Marushevska has partially revoked the assessment of imported goods at so-called indicative prices at Odesa customs center. The indicative prices scheme was introduced in 2008 to compare the cost of goods imported to Ukraine with information on the same or similar goods contained in a specialized database.
She said this was done to prevent importers from setting the price of goods too low deliberately to cut official customs fees. In practice, the scheme turned out to be easily used to facilitate corruption: customs officers could reduce the indicative assessment or not apply it at all to facilitate a bribe. Customs officers set the indicative assessment too high for other importers, to ensure that they also received a bribe.
