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Draft Customs Code of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia is in line with international standards, official says

The draft Customs Code of the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia is in line with standards of the European Union and the World Customs Organization, Alyaksandr Shpilewski, head of the Belarusian State Customs Committee, told reporters in the Kamyanets district, Brest region, on November 20.

The Code is more “modern” than the codes currently in place in the three states, Mr. Shpilewski said. “It can be signed already today.”

The draft stipulates that customs controls will be scrapped at the Belarusian-Russian border on July 1, 2010 and at the Kazakh-Russian border on July 1, 2011.

The Code is projected to be inked by the three heads of state at a summit of the Eurasian Economic Community to be held in Minsk on November 27.

Mr. Shpilewski visited the Brest region to take part in a two-day meeting of the Eurasian Economic Community’s Council of Customs Chiefs.

The meeting focused on how the Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road will be enforced by the Belarusian and Russian customs agencies following the abolition of controls at the shared border.

Other items on the agenda included the carriage of goods in transit, the use of information technologies, efforts to simplify procedures for vehicles brought into Russia by Belarusian nationals and the Eurasian Economic Community’s draft program envisaging the development of an automated control system for transit shipments. //BelaPAN