Azerbaijan’s customs committee actively involved in digitalization of trade

20 December 2019 18:51 (UTC+04:00)

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Azerbaijan’s State Customs Committee is actively involved in the digitalization of trade processes and improvement of the customs clearance system, Aliya Azimova, head of the office of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Azerbaijan, said at the 2nd Republican Forum of Foreign Trade Participants, Trend reports from the event Dec. 20.

Azimova noted that according to a number of world economy experts, if the period for passing customs procedures is reduced in the world as a whole, the global economy will grow annually by $100-$200 billion. The head of the IFC Baku Office said that in Azerbaijan, this fact is taken into account and the relevant work is underway to reduce the duration of customs clearance.

According to the latest Doing Business report by the World Bank, customs clearance of import operations at the Azerbaijani border is 14 hours, which is 30 percent less than the average duration of customs clearance in the world. Thanks to the improvement of the customs clearance system, the time for processing export operations has also been reduced to 17 hours, approaching the average global indicator of 16 hours.

The Logistics Performance Index (LPI) in Azerbaijan over the past four years has amounted to 2.45 points. Achieving such a high mark was made possible thanks to the performance of customs authorities and transport infrastructure. For comparison, Germany got the highest LPI - 4.19 points.

Baku is hosting the 2nd Republican Forum of Foreign Trade Participants on Dec. 20. The forum is attended by Chairman of the State Customs Committee Safar Mehdiyev, Azerbaijani Minister of Agriculture Inam Karimov, Chairman of Azerbaijan’s Food Safety Agency Goshgar Tahmazli as well as other officials and about 900 entrepreneurs.

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