Armenian customs officers thwart attempts of import of banned Turkish goods
YEREVAN, February 19. /ARKA/. Armenian customs officers have thwarted a series of attempts to import Turkish goods, banned by the government late last year, a senior official at the State Revenue Committee Artem Karapetyan said at a press conference on Friday.
The six-month ban on imports of Turkish goods came into force on January 1, 2021. It was imposed by an October 21 decision of the government, almost a month after Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey and Middle East mercenaries, attacked Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Armenian government said the measure was a retaliation to the Turkish authorities' provocative calls, supply of arms to Azerbaijan and deployment of mercenaries from the Middle East to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, which undermined the stability in the region, including the international efforts to find a peaceful settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
On December 25, 2020, Armenia's State Revenue Committee (SRC) announced that the ban would not apply to goods imported before December 31, on condition that they had gone through customs clearance before that date and were intended for personal use.
The State Revenue Committee said also that the ban would apply to all goods of Turkish origin re-imported from Georgia, Russia and other countries.
Asked whether Armenia may extend the ban, Karapetyan said today that the ban is first imposed for a period of 6 months, and can be extended several more times again for 6 months. He said under the rules of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a member country can apply unilateral temporary customs privileges and prohibitions when importing from third countries, but has to notify its partners in advance. Karapetyan said the lifting of the ban or its extension is a political move.
According to Mnatsakan Sharafyan, the head of the customs statistics at the State Revenue Committee, Armenia's tax revenues from the import of Turkish goods in 2020 amounted to 25 billion drams (a little more than $50 million).
“It is too early to assess how much this ban has influenced the tax collection rate. Prompted by the ban, many local entrepreneurs are starting to reorient their businesses and import goods from China. And this means that the duties will be collected anyway,” Sharafyan said.
According to him, the bulk of imports form Turkey are clothes, citrus fruits, aluminum pipes and detergents. ($1 - 524.92 drams). –0—
