Russia set to facilitate trade at its harbors

In pursuit of more free trade

Cargo traffic at Russian ports in 2011 will reach 535 million tons. This is a record figure in the history of Russian stevedoring businesses. However, the internal rules of control authorities, the slow implementation of electronic cargo declaration, excessive requirements to sea border crossing points hamper further development and the competitiveness of Russian ports.

Getting rid of physical inspection

One has to admit that last year the Russian government through the Ministry of Transport has undertaken serious efforts to improve the competitiveness of domestic seaports. In many cases, things have started rolling. The ports boundaries have been established, and most importantly – the state has adopted new procedures, aimed to reduce the average time ships spend in Russian ports to undergo border control formalities and customs clearance. One of them is the abolition of physical inspection onboard the ships.

At the same time, on December 21st at a meeting of the Government’s Marine Board Sergei Ivanov, the then-Deputy Prime Minister, admitted that the problem of long delays and red tape at the crossing-border points has not yet been resolved.

"While the boats still come out to conduct physical inspection of ships, it’s useless to talk about something else," Mr. Ivanov was quoted as saying. According to him, it is high time for the state control authorities to get rid of such a practice of cargo clearance, which results in long delays and additional costs.
The initiative facilitating international trade was first introduced in early 2011 but only in a few Russian ports the physical inspections were replaced by pre-arrival processing, e-declarations of import / transit cargoes, etc. The reason is the state machine, which is very slow to adapt to new realities and negligence of some marine agents.

According to Deputy Minister of Transport Victor Olersky, at some ports all vessels are now being registered without physical inspection on board, and at the port of Kaliningrad, the proportion of vessels that are not visited by boarder and customs officers accounts for 75%.

Overall, the situation with the new procedure looks better in the ports of the North-West region, says Larisa Korshunova, Deputy Chief of Customs Control of Transport and Communications Department of the Federal Customs Service of Russia (FCS).

"About 50% of vessels arriving in the regional ports are checked without boarding the vessels. The situation in the southern region is a little bit worse. By early 2012, I believe, we will have a progress in this matter," the official said.

Now the FCS performs the inspection of cargo on the basis of internationally approved customs risk management system. On the contrary, the Border Guard Service still insists on all-out checks, which again, can not expedite the border crossing and customs clearance procedures. The Ministry of Transport has applied to the FSB with a proposal to exercise control in marine border crossing points on the basis of the risk management system.

Sergei Ivanov said that FSB also insists on total inspection of transit containers. According to him, the customs authorities should exclude total checks of all transit cargoes, except the cases when there is operational information that requires examination.

Another problem is that the state regulatory authorities make excessive demands upon the arrangement of marine border-crossing points. This inevitably delays the process of the facilities commissioning, increased costs for investors and leads to the bureaucratization of cargo clearance process and to corruption and excessive demands.

In order to curb the appetite of regulatory authorities, Sergei Ivanov proposed to consider their requirements with the participation of all interested ministries and departments, striking out the excessive ones.

The next problem is the slow introduction of electronic submission of cargo documents. According to business representatives the current system of advance cargo system declaration in Russia today in fact is not what it was supposed to be, but just the same old lines. There must be an automated interdepartmental of information (MIAIS), which is still not ready, although its creation has been disputed for a long time. Sergei Ivanov informed that the government allocated in the 2012 budget the necessary resources for the project implementation.

The government agencies is not the only side to be blamed for the red tape. Victor Olersky noted that ship agents often submit incomplete information on the cargo.

Rosgranitsa head Dmitry Bezdelov told the Maritime Board’s meeting that to expedite the border control and customs procedures the border crossing posts should have state-of-the-art scanning and surveillance equipment. Experts believe that the creation of a single owner of marine checkpoints, who would coordinate the work of all state regulatory agencies, might also help facilitate the customs procedures and trade flows at the Russian seaports.

Vitaly Chernov