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‘Customs inspections must not be detrimental to efficiency’
“Our target is the provision of this balance,” the minister said during the expanded Presidents’ Council meeting of the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) on Friday in İstanbul. He said Turkey is geographically at the crossroads of major smuggling routes and this situation increases the importance of inspections at customs.
In the past, the common perception was that the main function of customs was to supply revenue to the budget and that they were symbols of protectionism and the state’s power, Yazıcı argued. He went on to describe the change in this perception over the course of the past few years: “Today customs has quite a different structure to reflect developments in the economy, politics and society.”
Turkey’s customs conduct a total of 4 million operations in a year, he asserted. The minister singled out İstanbul’s customs in particular, which was responsible for 42 percent of the country’s total exports and 36 percent of its imports last year.
The simplification of the customs process, he said, now means that 73 percent of the operations required for exports are completed in half an hour, with 96 percent of them being completed in 24 hours at the most.
As he addressed the exporters, the minister underlined that the government will continue to do everything necessary to facilitate exports, which in turn will result in an increase in the competitiveness of domestic exporting companies.
Yazıcı explained that TİM and the Customs Undersecretariat currently have two protocols in effect but these will be revised and merged into a single document for the sake of simplicity and efficiency.
After the minister, TİM President Mehmet Büyükekşi delivered a speech in which he mostly criticized the application of the “red line.” The red line, meaning a detailed physical inspection of exported items in customs, is creating serious problems such as delays in the delivery of goods to foreign customers and extra costs, he noted.
Exports are Turkey’s future, Büyükekşi argued, and mentioned that the figures for sales abroad have bounced back to pre-crisis levels and are progressing steadily. He noted that the provision of a healthy ground is the prerequisite to ensuring the continuation of this performance. The most outstanding example of this “healthy ground” is the provision of a competitive exchange rate which yields supremacy for Turkish companies over their rivals in profitability, innovation and employment, he said. Büyükekşi recalled a recent survey conducted by TİM in which 68 percent of the participating exporters showed currency rates to be the most significant impediment to exports, and underlined that every country that adopts exports as a growth strategy offer currency rates that advantage their exporters.
He also spoke bitterly about the problems in customs. “We appreciate the self-sacrifice of customs administrations which shoulder a heavy burden despite a limited workforce and technical difficulties,” said Büyükekşi, adding that this hard work is not enough to resolve the problems, though. For him, all the problematic issues regarding customs may still be solved with modifications in regulations and administrative measures.
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