On November 18, 2021, the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting presented the second episode of the VI wave of the annual survey of importers and exporters on "Simplification of trade procedures in Ukraine 2021: Customs procedures, appeals, digital products." The research was conducted within the project "Support to the Public Initiative" For Fair and Transparent Customs "with the support of the European Union, the Renaissance Foundation and the Atlas Network.
According to the survey, enterprises rarely report difficulties in customs procedures. At the same time, importers face difficulties in customs procedures more often than exporters. Exporters often point to the complexity, length of procedures and requirements to provide many documents. Importers see the greatest difficulties in decision-making procedures on customs value and classification of goods.
Every third exporter and every second importer had experience with cargo delays, queues at the border remain the main cause of cargo delays over the last year.
Surveyed exporters and importers more often than last year agreed with the thesis that in order to avoid downtime of goods it is better to agree with excessive (in their opinion) customs requirements than to challenge them legally. To the existing business climate, even if it is not perfect (56.5% of respondents in 2021 to 40% of respondents in 2020). At the same time, only half of the respondents are informed about the appeal procedure, and only one in five respondents has experience in appealing.
The results of the survey showed low business awareness of the new procedures, in particular, 85% of respondents do not know what the NCTS joint transit procedure is, and 82.4% of respondents do not know what the status of AEO is. Awareness and use of new digital customs products are also low, in particular, only 10.5% of respondents use the personal account of the "Single Window for International Trade".
