Azernews.Az

The customs services of Azerbaijan and Turkey need to expand their relations, especially in fighting smuggling and drug trafficking, Chairman of the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee (SCC),Lieutenant-General Aydin Aliyev said at a meeting with the delegation led by Turkey's Deputy Minister of Customs and Trade Fatih Metin on September 23.

Expressing a satisfaction with the current level of cooperation between the customs officers of the two countries, Aliyev noted the usefulness of regular mutual exchange of the experience.

During the meeting, he spoke about the annual growth of commodity turnover between Azerbaijan and Turkey and expressed a confidence in maintaining this tendency in the future.

Faith Metin, in turn, thanked for the sincere welcome and expressed the satisfaction with the growth rate of Azerbaijan's economy.

Metin said that there are opportunities for further increasing of commodity turnover between the two countries and its growth rate will increase after the commissioning of Baku-Tbilisi-Kars.

He stressed a great responsibility of the two countries' customs bodies with development of the economic cooperation.

Later, the Turkish delegation became familiar with the work of the Target Centre established under the SCC. The Target Committee, which was founded within the project for development of Azerbaijan's customs service envisaged by UN Development Program, gives opportunity for a single observation of customs procedures at all border crossing points of the country. Thid was made possible thanks to the installation of about 800 surveillance cameras.

The commodity turnover between Azerbaijan and Turkey amounted to $1.17 billion in January-July 2013. This figure was equal to $2.12 billion in 2012.

Turkey is in the third place among Azerbaijan's trade partners after Russia and the U.S.