MINSK, 15 March (BelTA) - Despite the fact that economies are different in different countries of the Customs Union, customs administration should be uniform, chairman of the State Customs Committee of Belarus Alexander Shpilevsky told reporters in Minsk. “If there is no uniform administration, there is no Customs Union,” he said. He added that all the conditions for transfer of control from internal to external borders of the Customs Union have been met. Currently, the customs authorities in Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan are working on solving problems related to the information interaction in application of the customs procedure of customs transit. The problem is that electronic communications necessary to control the transit transportation of foreign goods are not delivered in full. As of 11 March 2011 Belarus’ customs bodies did not receive 1,037 electronic confirmations from Russian customs bodies and 578 confirmations from Kazakh customs bodies that the customs transit procedure had been completed. The reason is that their information systems have not yet been adapted to e-formats of transit declaration introduced on 1 January 2011. Moreover, a number of errors were reported at the departure and destination customs offices while entering data into their information systems. When speaking about information cooperation between customs bodies of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan, head of Russia’s Customs Service Andrei Belyaninov said that a lot has been done on the issue. “The relations of customs bodies of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan do not cause concern. These days we have been working with our Kazakh counterparts on the information exchange,” Andrei Belyaninov said. According to him, the parties managed to solve a number of urgent problems regarding the exchange of information. “We are able to solve any problems that can emerge in future,” Andrei Belyaninov concluded.

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