December to Be Most Difficult for Customs

According to the planned obligations, the State Customs Committee in December should provide transfer to the state budget of 198 million 899 thousand AZN on foreign trade operations. This amount of customs duries has never oc curred at the monthly basis.

According to the SCC, in November of this year the volume of funds transferred to the state budget by the participants of foreign trade operations, import duties and taxes, amounted to 132.6 million AZN, which is 1.7 million AZN less than in October.

In the first 11 months of this year the volume of collected customs duties and taxes amounted to 1 billion 391.1 million AZN, 0.9% more than in the comparable period of 2014.

In the state budget for 2015 the plan forecast of customs duties and taxes was increased by 80 million AZN and approved at the level of 1 billion 590 million AZN.

Experts point out that the monopoly on the import of many consumer goods into Azerbaijan is supported at the management level of the SCC, which has backers in high places. Corruption in this fiscal agency affects the total collection of customs taxes and liberalization of the economy in difficult times, when incomes from oil exports are greatly reduced. 08D