Paring off the hours
Azamat M. gears down his truck loaded with yarn as he prepares to enter Georgia from Turkey at the Sarpi/Sarp border crossing point. He has travelled over 3,500 kilometres since leaving Tashkent, Uzbekistan, transiting through Turkmenistan and Iran before entering Turkey. Only a few kilometres more to his destination, the Georgian port of Batumi.
He cruises into the gate for passport control and vehicle registration, then moves on to the weigh station and presents his papers. The actual customs procedures will be conducted inland at the new Customs Clearance Zone in Batumi. He parks and steps out to grab a quick sandwich at the food store before returning to his vehicle and easing back into the driver’s seat. The entire process takes just over 10 minutes.
For the past 15 years, Azamat has been hauling yarn to Turkish and Georgian ports. For most of that time, the border crossings were very different: long waits, no services. What now takes minutes used to take several hours or even days. Today, customs and other border procedures are all conducted at a single window where once there was queues at four or five separate approval points.
Over and above the frustration they caused, the delays meant more time spent in getting the goods to market, drastically increasing the economic distance from Tashkent to the open sea.
The facilities at Sarpi/Sarp and most other Turkish border crossing points were modernized using a “build-operate-transfer” financial model that is a first worldwide. The transformation happened when the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB) joined forces with 137 chambers and commodity exchanges to form the Customs and Tourism Enterprises Co. Inc. (GTI), and entirely at its own cost, built or renovated all the buildings at the sites, including entry-exit control units, search hangars, contraband storage facilities, weigh stations and truck part areas. It equipped them with the latest technology: X-ray vehicle scanning systems, card pass systems, closed circuit camera and security systems. It also constructed a whole range of passenger services: food and beverage stores, banks, souvenir shops and duty-free stores.
Payback for the around $200 million GTI invested is being provided by the revenues those services generate. The company operates the commercial facilities; the administrative facilities have been transferred to the government.
The project has not burdened the public budget: in fact, GTI’s commercial activities at border crossing points have generated nearly $90 million additional tax revenues. And modernization has boosted trade: vehicle and passenger numbers have increased fourfold and now five million vehicles and 15 million passengers pass through each year.
Road transport is the only mode capable of interconnecting, door-to-door, all businesses to every market the world over. If you penalise road transport you penalise the economy as a whole even more.
Martin Marmy
Two sides of a coin
Border security is important for the OSCE. Borders need to be able to intercept trafficking and terrorist activities. But equally important is the free flow of legitimate trade. Security and trade facilitation are two sides of the same coin.
The point is clearly made by Martin Marmy, Secretary General of the International Road Transport Union: “Road transport is the only mode capable of interconnecting, door-to-door, all businesses to every market the world over. If you penalise road transport you penalise the economy as a whole even more.”
The modernization of the Turkish border crossing points is just one of the best practices from the OSCE/UNECE handbook. Another is the automated risk management system that Georgia has introduced for customs clearance of cargo. All cargo entering and exiting Georgia used to be subject to physical inspection. In practical terms, that meant superficial inspections and many opportunities for petty corruption. Under the new system, only 15 per cent of shipments are assessed as potential risks and subject to various levels of inspection. The remaining 85 per cent go through the so-called “Green Channel”, undergoing document review only. This has reduced the time needed to clear most shipments from at least three days to an average of two hours. The results: lower costs for both traders and revenue services; an increase in trade turnover (11 per cent in 2012) and more effective detection. The risk-based inspections identify nearly twice as many violations than physical inspections did in the past.
Another possibility for cutting time spent at border crossings where trust between neighbouring countries is sufficient, is for customs services to work together. At border crossing points between Norway and Sweden, officers of one state are authorized to apply the controls on behalf of the other.
Landlocked countries
Efficient road transport is important for all countries, but especially for those that have no direct access to the sea. Improving infrastructures and procedures to reduce the time it takes to get goods to the market is an important point in the 2003 UN-endorsed Almaty Programme of Action Addressing the Special Needs of Landlocked Developing Countries, which the OSCE promotes. A major review conference of the Almaty Programme of Action is planned for 2014.
Twelve of the OSCE’s 57 participating States are landlocked: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Serbia, Tajikistan, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For each of them, be it hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the sea, every hour that can be pared off the transport time is a bit of prosperity gained.