The Verkhovna Rada adopted at the second reading law on the unification of the rates of customs duties for light industry goods (bill No. 4410).
As a correspondent of Interfax-Ukraine reports, 307 MPs voted for the bill at the second reading, with the required 226 votes.
According to the explanatory note to the bill, the unification of duty rates will speed up the customs clearance of such goods. The bill provides for the establishment of equal preferential rates of import duty on homogeneous goods of the light industry by reducing (by 255 subcategories) or increasing (by 25 categories) the current rates.
The bill, in particular, establishes preferential rates of customs duty: 0% – for raw materials that are not produced in Ukraine (yarn, fibers, threads 50-53 group of the Ukrainian Classifier of Goods for Foreign Economic Activity), as well as for artificial fibers of commodity items 5505, 506 and 5507.
In addition, a preferential rate is set from 1% to 8% for finished products – fabrics, felt, wicker nets, twine and ropes. At the same time, the bill retains the current preferential rates of 5% for mixed cotton fabrics (code 5211).
As for the increase in the rate of duties, they are increased to 10% for light industry goods in those subcategories where such rates are below 10% (some 105 commodity subcategories).
As stated on the website of the Ministry of Finance on Friday, this bill was drafted in cooperation with the Ukrainian Association of enterprises of textile and leather industry.
The Ministry of Finance said that the provisions of the bill do not apply to goods originating from countries with which Free Trade Agreements had been concluded.
Earlier, owner of the Textile-Contact Group, member of the Presidium of the Council of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine Oleksandr Sokolovsky spoke in support of the adoption of this bill.
“Today, the average rate of customs duties on fabric is from 0% to 5%, some up to 8%, while the nomenclature of groups 50-59 of the Ukrainian Classifier of Goods for Foreign Economic Activity includes more than 1,500 items of commodity subcategories, which even a specialist cannot visually distinguish without a laboratory. And laboratories are overloaded and examine the fabric for up to two or three months, and the production technologies go ahead and it is often problematic for them to deal with the codes,” he said.
According to him, the unification of rates will make it possible to simplify the work of inspectors, reduce the costs of importers of raw materials, and also create clear rules of the game for business.
