He said that this is one of the main priorities of the work of the customs committee. He noted that the work is underway to develop the customs transit procedure in accordance with the Convention on International Transport of Goods Under Cover of TIR Carnets (TIR Convention) and to apply the e-TIR procedure.

“To speed up the implementation of the New Computerized Transit System (NCTS), which will allow us to exchange information based on bilateral agreements, we appealed to the joint EU-EFTA (European Free-Trade Association) committee, which is the governing body of the conventions on a common transit procedure and on the simplification of formalities in trade in goods,” he said.

“On Dec. 5 last year, at a meeting of the joint committee in the city of Oslo, Azerbaijan’s appeal was considered and decision was made to grant Azerbaijan the non-formal observer country status,” he added.

Aydin Aliyev noted that an ad-hoc working group was set up to bring Azerbaijani legislation in line with the requirements of the convention for the effective application of the customs guarantee mechanism during transit operations and, in general, for the improvement of skills of customs authorities.

“All this is aimed at preparation for joining the abovementioned conventions and the application of the NCTS,” he said.

Aydin Aliyev also noted that after the relevant technical work on the implementation of the TIR Electronic Pre-Declaration (TIR-EPD) application [that allows transport operators to send advance information on goods transported under TIR procedure to customs authorities in every country along the TIR journey in one go] is completed in Azerbaijan, it is planned to launch an e-TIR pilot project aimed at fully usage of the e-TIR procedure.

“If earlier, e-TIR projects were implemented only bilaterally between neighboring countries, the project, in which Azerbaijan will take part as well, for the first time will cover a greater number of countries involved in the corresponding transport corridor,” he added.

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