About 60% proposals of NCE RK "Atameken" were supported during the development of the Treaty on the Customs Code of the EAEU

On 26^th of December 2016 at a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in St. Petersburg EAEU heads signed the draft Treaty on the Customs Code of the Union.

The Customs Code of the EAEU will enter into force on 1^st of July 2017.

The new document was developed for three years, from December 2013th. For the first time not only government representatives, but also experts from the business circles of member states of the Eurasian Economic Union participated in this process.

Interests of Kazakhstani business in the Working Group on the improvement of the customs legislation, created by the Council of the Eurasian Economic Commission decision in October 2013, was represented by Managing Director - Director of the Customs Administration of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs "Atameken" Dina Mamasheva and Chairman of the Board of the Kazakhstani Association of Customs Brokers / Representatives Gennady Shestakov.

Dina Mamasheva observes that the most active developers of the Code were the business communities of Kazakhstan and Russia.

"To implement the decisions of the Working Group on the site of the Eurasian Economic Commission was set up an expert group to prepare a draft CC of EAEU. representatives of business community of Kazakhstan - representatives of JSC "NC" Kazakhstan Temir Zholy ", JSC" KEGOC", JSC" NC "KazMunayGas", LLP "Philip Morris Kazakhstan", LLP "Eurasian Group", JSC "Asia Auto", JSC "Kazpost", the Union of transport Workers “KAZLOGISTICS" and others were actively involved in the work of the Expert Group.

 According to the draft of CC of EAEU, there were held 25 meetings of the Working Group, 14 meetings of high-level officials, authorized to resolve differences over the draft Agreement of CC of EAEU. Within the frames of these meeting were considered more than 400 issues (about1200 amendments). 32 meetings were held within the framework of the Expert Group.

Two internal coordination procedures were also carried out: the first procedure - in 2015 by the Member States of the Customs Union (Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia), the second - in 2016 by the Member States of EAEU (RA, RB, KR, Kazakhstan and Russia).

According to the results of the internal agreement of the draft Treaty of EAEU, member states of the Customs Union submitted more than 1,500 proposals in 2015. Out of 552 proposals prepared by the Republic of Kazakhstan (the consolidated position of NCE and public authorities) about 70% were accepted.

According to the results of the internal agreement of the draft Treaty of CC of EAEU in 2016, the Member States of EAEU submitted about 600 proposals and comments", - said Dina Mamasheva.

The National Chamber within the frames of internal coordination sent a package of 87 amendments, which take into account the stance of business

The amendments include terms of submission of preliminary information, amendments on ICBC "Khorgos", the classification of goods under the HS, the origin of the goods, the customs value, customs fees, surcharge customs duties (designed by the WTO rates), return (offset) of customs payments, the enforcement of the obligation to pay customs duties.

"About 60% of proposals of the National Chamber were supported", - said Dina Mamasheva.

Suggestions for improvement

EAEU Customs Code is the basic document governing the customs regulation in the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as in the Republic of Kazakhstan, and is included in the list of the main documents that make up the Union law.

Participation of NCE on the work of the draft Customs Code of the EAEU allows during development phase and the discussion of the strategic document to solve the many problems of the business community, stemming from the imperfection of the current legislation and the existing law enforcement practice, the need to modernize customs processes, reduce administrative barriers, speeding up the passage of customs borders and the customs clearance inside the country, the introduction of advanced information technologies and international standards for customs matters, as well as the elimination of corruption on the part of the customs authorities in cooperation with traders and other participants in near-customs infrastructure (carriers, owners of warehouses, FEZ, customs brokers, etc. )

"The developers of the project, in addition to the main task - modernization of the existing customs legislation, had the task of codification of more than 30 international treaties governing the customs legal relations in the customs union directly into the body of the Code. The main issues that the business outlined in the preparation of the draft Customs Code of the EAEU, are the establishment of clear and precise legal relationship in which each business entity is aware of its rights and responsibilities; elimination of subjectivity in making decisions by the customs authorities, including through the use of information systems and information technologies; reduction of the time of customs operations; the introduction of advanced information technologies and international standards for customs matters; further development of the institute of authorized economic operators and, in general, with the exception of collisions in the legislation - both directly in the customs and with other branches of the law", - explained Dina Mamasheva.

465 articles of the Customs Code of the EAEU

After three years of the work on the draft Customs Code of the Eurasian Economic Union (CC of EAEU), it consists of 9 sections, 61 chapters and 465 articles.

Major novelties of the Code:

1.  Priority of electronic customs declaration and the use of a written declaration only in exceptional cases - is the main achievement of the Code, we are finally moving away from paper-based technologies;

2.  Possibility of doing customs operations related to the registration of the customs declaration and release of goods, automatically, using information systems of customs authorities - absolute innovation, the implementation of which is now available in very few countries of the world;

3.  Optimization of information to be stated in the declaration of the goods and the transit declaration - a significant reduction has not occurred, but there is possibility of reduction of such data in the future;

4.  Possibility of filing the customs declaration without presentation to the customs authority of documents on the basis of which it was filled - possibility of application principle of declaring at all stages starting with the transit declaration to the clearance for any procedure (basic principle - only the electronic declaration, documents only on the basis of a risk management system);

5.  Use of a single window mechanism for customs operations related to the arrival of goods into the customs territory and their departure from it, the customs declaration and release of goods. This principle of a single submission of documents if the information is contained in the databases of state bodies with further customs control, it is not provided;

6.  It revises the term "declarant" that allows us to simplify the declaration, to get away from the concept of foreign trade transactions, to remove problems for the declaration of goods transported through the customs border of transactions between residents of the Union;

7.  It extends the possibility of clearance prior to submission (the customs declaration) - this possibility is represented not only for goods of AEO and express consignments, as well as within investment contracts and economic procedures that allows to clear about 70% of incoming goods directly without declaration, to submit a declaration within a month after the release of goods on an interest-free grace period for payments;

8.  There were reviewed questions of provision of delays in the payment of import duties. Now the release of goods with deferred payment of up to 30 days is possible in all cases, if security is presented and further interest is paid. The list of cases interest-free deferment is also provided and is possible for further expansion through the Commission's decision;

9.  There were reviewed mechanisms of presentation and use of advance information - the customs authorities are obliged to assess the information, to use it at the request of the declarant, as the notification of arrival, a document for temporary storage, transit declaration. There is an opportunity through the introduction of pre-information system to accelerate really and to simplify the procedures for the passage of goods across the border;

10.  The well-regulated approaches to prior declaration - law change, except for the new bans and restrictions, does not change the terms of clearance upon previously submitted declaration. If the goods are declared previously, then there will be no additional charges in case of interest rate fluctuations;

11.     There were clearly regulated the questions of review of classification decisions. If a clear forgery of submitted documents on the classification of goods was not confirmed, the adoption of the new classification decisions on additional charges on previously declared codes is not executed. Now revision of HS code upon customs inspection will not impose a penalty payment on the employer, as it operates today, which does not allow to reduce the limitation period and shift the focus on post-clearance control;

12.     Considerable expansion of the list of simplifications for authorized economic operators - new system of AEO allows you to create a chain of authorized operators: carrier, a warehouse owner, a broker, a declarant. An authorized carrier (first type certificate) gets almost complete freedom of movement and minimum control during transportation within the procedure of customs transit of goods. Authorized operator on transit will be recognized throughout the territory of the EAEU. Conscientious carrier can carry transit transportation across the EAEU with the maximum possible simplification of procedures and minimum supervision;

13. Reduction of the duration of the control during transit. If all the customs procedures the maximum release period (examination, inspection, expertise, etc.) 10 days, for transit - 5 days.

14.    There has been reviewed the possibility of declaring multimodal transport by one shipping document. Participants of FEA will have the opportunity to complete a transit declaration for all the goods in transit. The only condition – there must be one responsible person who organizes supply chain with all the reloadings and changes of modes of transport, supervise compliance with all the rules from the beginning to the end. This allows KTZH to become a national operator, to carry out multimodal transportation (train / car / sea / air) under the same contract and the same transport document.

15.     Responsibilities of customs representatives are clearly defined. If the customs representative did not know and could not know that the documents submitted by the declarant are inaccurate, he is removed from the responsibility, and he bears no solidarity responsibility for payment;

16.     Revised control over activities in the FEZ. The changes allow you to remove problems existing today in the administration and control of the FEZ, including logistic FEZ ("Khorgos-eastern gate") and a special economic zone of ICBC "Khorgos".

17. Expansion of the activities of duty free shops. DFS may be opened upon entry to the country, not only just for departure, as it is today. DFS will be permitted to trade within the Union. For example, flying to Moscow, a Kazakhstani resident can be served at DFS;

18.  Revision of the amounts of the security for the customs representatives (brokers). Today, the amount of security for brokers – is 1 million euro. There was introduced an option for revision by the Council decision.

19.  Reduction of the control over conditionally released goods. The possibility of removal from customs supervision of all conditionally released (preferential) goods imported before 1^st of July 2010, including subsoil goods. Today, these goods are under customs control indefinitely and, for example, goods imported by TCO, Philip Morris, can’t be sold, recycled, exported without payment of previously granted benefits including fines. Elimination of the control of goods imported under the WTO rates after 5 years.

The task - a large scale advocacy among the population

After the signing of the EAEU Treaty on the CC for the implementation of the project on the territory of Kazakhstan, it is necessary to conduct the ratification of the draft CC EAEU in Parliament.

After that the draft Customs Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan will be developed. There will be developed solutions of the Eurasian Economic Commission, by-laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the sphere of customs regulation, aimed at implementing the reference rules of CC of EAEU.

The final stage will be joint outreach with the Ministry of National Economy of Kazakhstan, the State Revenue Committee of MF RK among the business community on the provisions of the Treaty on EAEU CC, including on-site in the regions.

The draft Treaty on the Customs Code of the Eurasian Economic Union can be found here