The meeting of the Public Council under the FCS of Russia was held in full-time and correspondence format. Ruslan Davydov, First Deputy Head of the FCS of Russia – Executive Secretary of the Public Council under the FCS of Russia, addressed the participants of the meeting of the Public Council under the FCS of Russia with an opening speech. He began his speech with a positive assessment of the interaction that developed between the Federal Customs Service and the Public Council throughout the entire 3-year electoral cycle.
A large photo reportage is available in a separate article.
Ruslan Davydov’s speech
Ruslan Davydov noted that the Public Council has become a significant factor in joint activities, an instrument for the development of the customs authorities of Russia. This year, it was possible to implement the joint idea of the Chairman of the Public Council and the head of the FCS of Russia, supported by the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, to increase the importance of the regional aspect in the work of the Council, bringing it closer to practical problems and concerns on the ground.
Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that the period of work of the Council, starting in 2018, passed under the sign of the implementation of the decisions of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, which formed the basis first of the Comprehensive Program for the Development of the Federal Customs Service for the period 2018-2020, and then the Development Strategy until 2030.
“The success of the implementation of the Comprehensive Program is due, among other things, to our joint actions, because we coordinated, promoted and implemented measures to radically reform the system of customs authorities together with you,” Ruslan Davydov said. “Today we can say with confidence that the reform was a success and fully justified itself.”
As a result of large-scale reforms, the customs service today has: the concentration of customs declaration in the centers of electronic declaration is already more than 99% of the declaration array; uniformity and unity of law enforcement practice; increasing the productivity of customs labor; improving the efficiency and effectiveness of customs control; reduction of corruption risks.
“Undoubtedly, the system of customs authorities created by us will determine their appearance for years to come,” stated the first deputy head of the FCS of Russia.
Here are some figures for 2021 illustrating the joint achievements of the Council and the Federal Customs Service. So, for 9 months of 2021, more than 1 million customs declarations were issued automatically – this is 25%, or every fourth DT.
As a result, about a thousand employees, officials issuing inspectors were released. The FCS of Russia has significant results in terms of auto production and import and export. And although for objective reasons (the introduction of various duties on grain, metals, timber, which hinder the possibilities of automation), it was not possible to achieve a 50 percent indicator for exports, the task of transferring 20 percent of import declarations for goods for auto release was completed in full.
A serious and difficult step, according to Ruslan Davydov, was automatic dispatching, which was introduced on February 1 of this year. “People quickly get used to the convenience, speed of customs operations, and any delay raises criticism and is perceived rather painfully,” he explained a number of problems that arose at the first stage of the new declaration format, which lasted about two months.
At the same time, statistics show that no more than 5% of diesel fuel fell under forced dispatching. Today, in about 99% of cases, the speed of registration and release has decreased, which is also confirmed by public ombudsmen in the regions. But the Federal Customs Service is still trying to listen sensitively to any signals from the field, especially from the Public Council and is ready for further work, discussion, creating the most comfortable conditions and environment for business.
The results of the work of the customs service are really impressive. Ruslan Davydov informed the meeting participants about the amount of customs payments collected over 9 months. For 2021, it was planned to collect about 5 trillion rubles, but in the very near future the customs service will block this figure and by the end of the year at least 1 trillion more than the planned amount will be collected.
“Of course, the situation on world markets after the pandemic economic recovery is a significant factor, but our administration is also yielding results,” he said.
The platform created jointly with the Council, the foundation of the Comprehensive Development Program, allowed the customs service to develop and approve in the Government of the Russian Federation the Development Strategy until 2030, which focuses on the development of the customs of the future, digital, highly intelligent, automated customs. This will allow the customs service to move to a new level of development. Electronic customs transit has become an important area of the Strategy 2030; it is transit using electronic navigation seals. In 2021, it has grown significantly. It is hoped that by the end of this year this issue will find normative consolidation at the supranational level.
No less important is the key task of creating a model of an intelligent checkpoint, without the solution of which it is impossible to eliminate the constraining factors that hinder the development of foreign trade. The customs have completed their part of the work – the model has been conceptually developed, the appearance of this model for various modes of transport has been spelled out and sent to the Ministry of Transport, which today, due to the distribution of competence in the system of state authorities, is responsible for construction and operation. There are minor problems of an administrative and organizational nature, but the FCS of Russia hopes to overcome all these difficulties and transfer the model of an intelligent checkpoint from a theoretical plane to a practical one. The cornerstone of the FCS of Russia, according to the speaker, remains the risk management system.
The Customs Service, together with the Council, thanks to the Charter of Fair Participants in Foreign Economic Activity, which played an important role, reached a significant number of low-risk companies. Today there are more than 11 thousand of them. These are the companies that provide more than 86% of all customs payments to the budget. As part of the RMS reform, on September 1, 2021, the Customs Risk Control Department was transformed into the Monitoring and Operational Control Center.
IIAC regularly collects and publishes statistics, notifications and documents on the Charter of bona fide participants in foreign economic activity.
The main point of reforming this area is the systematization of monitoring of, first of all, customs operations, customs control, all activities of the customs authorities of the Russian Federation, the maximum approximation of work to real time, which is a certain super task. It is necessary to ensure the continuity of control, its end-to-end nature, from preliminary information to the stage of resuming customs control after the release of goods. The goal is to make the supply chains as transparent as possible.
Speaking about the continuity of customs control, first of all, we think about the development of customs control after the release of goods. Today, the fiscal results of post-control have become comparable to the results of the RMS before the release of goods, approximately 19 billion rubles. The task of post-control through a fine sieve is to sift everything that was released automatically and, if reasonable suspicions arose, to start control actions. The FCS of Russia pays great attention to the work of mobile groups formed from employees and officials of customs control units after the release of goods. This line of work is yielding meaningful results. This year, just for cut flowers, customs payments have grown several times, from 2 billion rubles to 7 billion rubles due to the fact that they managed to return the volume of their customs clearance to the Russian Federation. The topic of tobacco has also become the focus of mobile groups. The volume of illegal import may reach 50 million packs a year, and this is a gigantic figure.
Concluding his speech, Ruslan Davydov dwelled on the planned rating of the Public Councils under the Federal Executive Bodies by the Public Chamber. He assured that, for its part, the FCS of Russia is ready to do everything for the Council to take a worthy, befitting place in the rating. He also drew the attention of the meeting participants to the procedure for the competitive selection of the new composition of the Public Council under the FCS of Russia, which had started on October 4. Highly appreciating the activities of the Council, the Federal Customs Service calls on active and potential members to actively participate in this process.
Speech by Vladimir Ivin
Vladimir Ivin, Deputy Head of the FCS of Russia, reported to the Public Council in more detail on how the activities of the Strategy 2030 Implementation Plan for the period 2021-2024 are being implemented, including the events of the current year.
The Federal Customs Service is confident that most of the measures will be taken. At the same time, there may be some shifts in the timing of the activities that are being implemented jointly with federal executive authorities – co-executors, for example, the Ministry of Transport, and which, for obvious reasons, are underfunded this year. According to the speaker, serious progress has been made in the administration of online commerce.
The topic is known to the Council; its members took an active part in its discussion at the EAEU level. All the proposals made at the stage of intrastate approval (GHS) have been accumulated in the Ministry of Finance for the preparation of an opinion from the Russian Federation. At the EEC level, pilot projects were supported in all EAEU countries to introduce the institute of an Internet trade operator into practice and conduct appropriate experiments on direct deliveries and bonded warehouses with its participation.
To implement this experiment in the Russian Federation, a draft order of the Ministry of Finance has already been prepared, providing for a change in the timing of writing off reserved advance payments from the personal account of an authorized operator no later than 10 days after the release of an international mail item, as well as automating the write-off process in case of loss of IGOs and the procedure for booking advance payments in case of irrevocable loss of IGOs. Agreements were reached on the procedure for applying non-tariff regulation measures (prohibitions and restrictions), a draft order of the Ministry of Finance was prepared on the registration of express cargo.
The next important aspect is electronic interaction with banks. The activities planned for this year on this topic have been fully implemented. A regulation of the Bank of Russia was issued, establishing the procedure for electronic document flow between customs authorities and banks when collecting debts for customs and other payments. All participants in the process are interested in the implementation of such a technology, which excludes paper workflow and shortens the time for document exchange.
Moving on to the next event of the Plan, Vladimir Ivin said that in recent years, taking into account the achievements in digitalization of customs processes on the part of business and foreign partners, there has been a decrease in interest in participating in the Green Corridor and Simplified Corridor projects, since the current indicators of registration, release and RMS applications fully satisfy the bulk of foreign economic activity participants. Today, the customs service is working on the modernization of these projects, the ideology of which was mainly aimed at providing simplifications to businesses when importing goods. There is a transition to a new level taking into account the application of the AEO recognition technology.
Highlighting measures in the direction of customs control after the release of goods, the speaker separately dwelt on the task of introducing customs monitoring technology planned for this and next year. This issue is being actively discussed by the business community and will be submitted to the Investment Council under the Government and under the President. Considering the high, all-round interest in this technology, a lot has been done this year.
First, it was decided that customs monitoring should become a measure of customs control. For this, the relevant amendments to the legislative base have been prepared, the deadline for sending to the State Duma a bill on amendments to the Law on Customs Regulation is scheduled for early next year. The next step will be the issuance of an order by the FCS of Russia defining the technology of customs monitoring. It will be used by the customs authority to assess and analyze information and information based on the established performance indicators of account. FEA calculated automatically.
As a result, customs monitoring will allow a foreign economic activity participant to independently assess the signs of violations of customs legislation identified in relation to himself, take measures to eliminate possible violations, voluntarily pay customs payments, avoiding customs checks and fines. The sources of data for customs monitoring will be electronic documents and information submitted during customs declaration, as well as (key point) information about the economic operations of the participant of foreign economic activity, which will be provided to the customs authorities in the remote access mode into the accounting system of goods of those participants in foreign economic activity who want to enter to the customs monitoring system.
The technology provides an opportunity for a foreign economic activity participant to either voluntarily eliminate violations, or prove their absence, if the customs authorities inform him that they have identified their signs. At the first stage, this technology is proposed to be tested at the AEO. The start of an experiment on customs monitoring is scheduled for June 2022. For this purpose, a draft decree of the Government of the Russian Federation on conducting an experiment was prepared, a draft roadmap was prepared based on the passport of a departmental project of the Ministry of Finance for the implementation of a customs monitoring system within the framework of the state program for public finance management and regulation of financial markets.
“This is also an important point, which suggests that these plans will certainly be fulfilled,” summed up Vladimir Ivin.
He also talked about the active work of business in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance to fulfill the task of updating the EAEU legal acts regulating customs legal relations. The package of amendments to the Customs Code of the EAEU includes 309 proposals, 52 on the initiative of the FCS of Russia. The most important ones are aimed at developing a unified transit system, regulating Internet commerce, further introducing digital technologies not only in the activities of the Russian customs authorities, but also in the activities of the customs authorities of the entire five, as well as those bodies with which the customs services interact.
In conclusion, Vladimir Ivin, addressing the meeting participants, once again dwelled on the fact that full-scale implementation of all reform measures is impossible without the participation of other interested federal executive authorities, as well as without constant interaction with business. Many issues require a consolidated opinion. The active, constructive position of the Public Council under the FCS of Russia on all topical issues of the implementation of Strategy 2030 is very important, since all measures are aimed at improving the conditions for doing business, and for law-abiding participants in foreign economic activity, at reducing unnecessary administrative burden.
Leonid Lozbenko’s speech
The final issue on the agenda of the meeting was highlighted by the Chairman of the Public Council under the FCS of Russia. Thanking the previous speakers for the very detailed and understandable information for the Council members on how the Strategy is being implemented, Leonid Lozbenko appealed to the Council members who had not submitted their proposals, with a request and instructions to speak out and send them to the Council no later than December 20. At the same time, special attention should be paid to 4 sections of the Strategy 2030, which did not come to the attention of the Council.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich Ivin very correctly noted that this is a common work. And the task of the council members is not to demand a report from the FCS, this is not our approach. Our task is to see if there is enough competence, money, personnel, how the Service positions itself in comparison with other authorities, and help in its development, these are our main tasks, – Leonid Lozbenko aptly noted. “Everything else is secondary.”
The main topic of the speech by the Chairman of the Council was the story about the first results of the work of the members of the OC in the regions, public “ombudsmen”, as Ruslan Valentinovich accurately characterized their activities. This innovation has fully justified itself. And although not much time has passed, the situation when all questions, without exception, were addressed to the Central Council, if not radically, but very much changed.
“Now in the central Council we can single out those issues that are common for all regions and solve them at the FCS level, and local issues will remain to be resolved in RTU, but again under the control of the OS,” Leonid Lozbenko shared the results of this work.
There was also a reaction from the side of the customs service, that dialogue began when one region looks at the report of another and makes a conclusion whether he supports the proposal or not. Subsequently, according to the speaker, it is worth holding a joint meeting at which to discuss the most painful points affecting the specifics of the region and characteristic of all.
By tradition, the speaker informed the meeting participants about the number of signatories of the Charter of bona fide foreign trade participants. On the morning of October 7, 4,832 companies had joined the Charter and 319 associations signed a declaration in support of it. The charter is an important element in the implementation of such an ambitious customs development program.
The increase in the number of Charters, that is, companies that promise not to violate the requirements of the law, allows the customs to concentrate their resources on “tank-hazardous” areas. It is necessary for all members of the Council, and especially members of the Council in the regions, to continue this work and bring their number to the number of foreign economic activity participants in the low-risk zone, today there are about 11 thousand of them.
Leonid Arkadyevich said a few words about the work of the website of the Public Council. Calling it the most informative and one of the best, he asked to supplement it with information about the speeches of the Council members at various forums, conferences, round tables, etc. He also gave parting words and recommendations in connection with the appointed elections of the new composition of the Council.
Ruslan Melnikov’s speech
Having thanked the heads of the FCS of Russia, functional and regional departments for effective joint work, professionalism, quick and clear answers and reactions to the questions posed by the Council, I gave the floor to Ruslan Melnikov, the Council’s representative in the Moscow Regional Customs and Vladimir Obydenov, representative in the Southern Federal District who spoke about the aspects of the activities of the regional representatives of the Council.
“The Moscow regional customs office today is – I’m not afraid of these words, one of the most significant, largest customs, the flagship customs in the structure of the FCS. Customs is a testing ground for the development, debugging, and subsequent implementation of most promising initiatives, solutions, approaches, and technologies aimed at improving the institution of customs administration and control, bringing the protection of the economic interests of our state to new modern levels, improving the investment climate in our state, and creating more favorable conditions for doing foreign economic business, and business in general ”- Ruslan Vladimirovich began his speech.
He further emphasized that the Chairman of the Public Council, Leonid Arkadyevich Lozbenko, provided clear, detailed and detailed instructions: what and how to do, what to pay special attention to, where and in what situation, what approaches will be most effective and efficient to apply, where you can act independently, and where it is better to act collectively.
“Close contact has been established with the leadership of the Moscow Regional Customs, good, friendly, trusting relations have been established, based on a uniform understanding of our tasks and goals, which allows us to avoid significant time lags, promptly and effectively solve various cases that arise in current activities, and in the foreseeable future “- notes Ruslan Vladimirovich.
The head of the Moscow Regional Customs, Vyacheslav Anatolyevich Romanovsky, also made a contribution, identifying officials from the customs management for operational interaction in solving certain problems, competencies and levels of decision-making on them.
Today, the following is carried out according to the planned, agreed plan, with regular reports to the Chairman of the OC on the status, problems, and other various specific nuances of the tasks and assignments being implemented.
According to Ruslan Vladimirovich, at present, further work on the implementation of the program and action plan developed as part of the approved Development Strategy of the Customs Service of the Russian Federation until 2030 for the period 2021 – 2024 is of particular interest.
The strategy for the development of the customs service within the specified period is, of course, a significant component that has an important role and value in the implementation of the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of May 7, 2018 No. 204 “On national goals and strategic objectives of the development of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2024”, which is regularly announced and discussed at meetings of the highest authorities of our country.
At the end of his speech, Ruslan Melnikov once again expressed gratitude to the FCS Management, the Chairman of the Public Council for a clear, highly professional, effective and efficient coordination of activities, and also, for his part, indicated his readiness to continue to carry out all the necessary work, within the framework of the tasks and certain competencies aimed at continuous improvement, modernization and optimization of processes.
The meeting ended with the awarding of the members of the Public Council with departmental awards of the FCS of Russia.
