More than 50% of declarations at Vitebsk customs are processed electronically

July 31, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. As of July 30, 50.6% of customs declarations were processed electronically at the Vitebsk customs, the head of the customs, Gennady Puchkov, told a BELTA correspondent. In the area of responsibility of the Vitebsk customs, eight business entities are participants in electronic declaration, including such large enterprises as the Novolukoml expanded clay aggregate plant, the Vitebsk Carpets joint-stock company, and the Orsha machine tool plant Krasny Borets. Business entities with the status of "Conscientious Foreign Economic Activity Participant" are directly connected to the electronic declaration system. The Vitebsk branch of RUP Beltamozhservice assists enterprises that do not yet have this status but wish to use modern customs declaration methods. The branch processes electronic declarations for another 34 foreign economic activity participants. The Vitebsk customs began registering statistical electronic declarations on July 1. The Vitebsk Broiler Poultry Factory joint-stock company became the first declarant. As of July 30, 15 statistical declarations have been registered in electronic form. The number of electronic declarants is constantly growing. As Gennady Puchkov noted, with electronic declaration, the document processing time is reduced from 4 hours to 15 minutes, and the costs associated with delivering goods to temporary storage warehouses are reduced. Another important impetus for the development of electronic declaration will be the European system for registration and identification of economic operators, which came into force in the EU on July 1 of this year, believes the head of customs. In accordance with it, no cargo will be able to enter the territory of the European Union without prior information about it being available in the euro customs. It is electronic declaration that will help solve the task of preliminary information, he explained. In accordance with the government's decree, 50% of exports should be covered by electronic declaration by September 2009, and by January 1, 2010, all export movement of goods should be processed electronically. -0-