Azerbaijan toughens car import procedures
By Nigar Orujova
Azerbaijan, as part of its measures to protect environment, has decided to toughen temporary import of vehicles, which do not meet Euro-4 environment standards.
State Customs Committee said that as of August 16, the owners of vehicles without the required environment standards have to present additional documents for the customs clearance of their vehicles.
In case of the vehicles owners' failure to submit the required documents and lack of information about the possible risks associated with the temporary import procedures, the customs bodies would require the guarantee of a third party or other guarantees set by the Customs Code of Azerbaijan for the temporary import of the vehicles.
Azerbaijan has stopped import of cars that do not meet Euro-4 standard since April.
Thus, only cars produced in the EU since 2005, in the U.S. since in 2004, in China and Japan since 2011, in Korea since 2006, and in Turkey since 2009 can be imported to the country.
The recent import restriction is part of efforts to improve the environmental situation in the country.
This restriction has already reduced the cars import by over 20 percent. Experts project that the number of imported cars will be reduced to 75,000 units in 2014. The country had imported 104,385 cars in 2013.