Expansion of green line to ease backlogs at Russian border

Electronic information transfer halves customs clearance time in Russia

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The Green Line for customs clearance at the border with Russia is set to get new customers.
      Tapani Erling, director-General of the Finnish National Board of Customs says that he plans to propose to the European Commission that Finland and Russia could take new transport companies into the Green Line system.
      With the help of the Green Line, goods travel across the border into Russia more smoothly because information transfers take place electronically, and not on paper. This speeds customs clearance while preventing evasion of Russian tariffs and taxes.
      The EU is introducing electronic customs clearance along the whole eastern border of the EU, but Erling feels that the change is moving forward too slowly. For this reason, customs authorities want to further develop the Green Line, which has been underused.
     
Only three companies are involved in the system that was introduced three years ago.
      Erling says that Russia would be willing to add 15 new companies dealing with export traffic to the list. After the changes, the Green Line would handle four per cent of all cross-border transport.
      Expansion of the line has been prevented so far by Russia's desire to get the system working in the other direction as well - from Russia to Finland - but now apparently that demand has been dropped.
     
According to Pjotr Ivanov, head of the Torfyanovka customs station, opposite Vaalimaa on the Finnish side, the green line reduces the time that it takes to clear customs formalities to about ten minutes, about half the normal time. However, at a monthly meeting of border officials, Ivanov said that a rapid expansion might prove counterproductive.
      If large numbers of new companies are accepted, the green line at the customs could also become congested.
     
Thanks to the Green Line, the possibilities of averting fees through double billing would decrease as information comes in electronically.
      In double billing the papers are switched at the border, and the value of the load is reported to the Russian officials as less than it really is.
      Another way to avert fees is to misrepresent the content of the load.
      Although double invoicing is declining, it remains common on the border. Bank of Finland economist Simon-Erik Ollus says that at the beginning of the decade, half of the value of the load of a lorry would often vanish at the border. This has declined to about a third.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Halonen and Putin discuss border lorry queues at Moscow meeting (1.10.2007)
  Customs consider closing border to curb lorry queue (27.9.2007)
  Parking area for eastbound trucks to cost over EUR 24 million (27.3.2007)
  Minister Huovinen: Lines of trucks caused by inefficiency of Russian Customs (10.11.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat