advertisement
Sat, May 26 2012
Pass-the-parcel at Customs
Photo: Цветелина Ангелова
Delivering ideas
The reason why the situation at Customs had been so grave was the lack of coordination between Customs and Bulgarian Posts, Milen Keremedchiev, head of Bulgarian Posts told Kapital after a January 11 meeting with Customs Agency head Vanyo Tanov. Keremedchiev and Tanov agreed to ease the procedure and come up with an action plan.
One of the ideas was for all paperwork to be done at a "one-stop-shop" desk while another idea was for post offices to be allowed to collect the fees to save people time by not having to go to Customs offices, and to drop banks as intermediaries. A new, more simplified VAT form will be put into use.
Elenko Elenkov’s road
Step 1: The client pays a valuables fee of four leva which goes to Bulgarian Posts for the service they provided.
Step 2: Customs Officers open the box to see if the contents is worth more than 15 euro.
Step 3: At another desk, the client must get a Economic Operation Registration and Identification (EORI) number. This requires filling in a form with all available personal data.
Step 4: Requires going to a photocopy machine and making a copy of the client’s ID card –which is against the law. The client pays for the photocopy.
Step 5: A customs officer manually inputs the data from the EORI form into a computer and prints out the form. It is useless.
Step 6: The Sofia Customs head office has to sign the printed EORI form.
Step 7: Back to the EORI desk where the form is stamped.
Step 8: With the EORI number, the client gets a floppy disc with the actual customs declaration. This is the service provided by Bulgarian Posts which still uses outdated floppy disc technology. There is no local area network connection with the next desk, and documents have been transferred in hard copy form.
Step 9: Another employee prints out the declaration and stamps it.
Step 10: The bank desk. All the fees, VAT and duties are paid.
Step 11: Waiting for the bank transfer to happen, which takes about 30 minutes. Another stamp on the declaration.
Step 12: The client pays the valuables fee.
Step 13: Desk 30. The client get his or her package.
If you have had a similar experience at Sofia Customs please share it by emailing editor@sofiaecho.com with a copy to kauza@capital.bg
Kapital weekly, issue 1, 2010
The reason why the situation at Customs had been so grave was the lack of coordination between Customs and Bulgarian Posts, Milen Keremedchiev, head of Bulgarian Posts told Kapital after a January 11 meeting with Customs Agency head Vanyo Tanov. Keremedchiev and Tanov agreed to ease the procedure and come up with an action plan.
One of the ideas was for all paperwork to be done at a "one-stop-shop" desk while another idea was for post offices to be allowed to collect the fees to save people time by not having to go to Customs offices, and to drop banks as intermediaries. A new, more simplified VAT form will be put into use.
Elenko Elenkov’s road
Step 1: The client pays a valuables fee of four leva which goes to Bulgarian Posts for the service they provided.
Step 2: Customs Officers open the box to see if the contents is worth more than 15 euro.
Step 3: At another desk, the client must get a Economic Operation Registration and Identification (EORI) number. This requires filling in a form with all available personal data.
Step 4: Requires going to a photocopy machine and making a copy of the client’s ID card –which is against the law. The client pays for the photocopy.
Step 5: A customs officer manually inputs the data from the EORI form into a computer and prints out the form. It is useless.
Step 6: The Sofia Customs head office has to sign the printed EORI form.
Step 7: Back to the EORI desk where the form is stamped.
Step 8: With the EORI number, the client gets a floppy disc with the actual customs declaration. This is the service provided by Bulgarian Posts which still uses outdated floppy disc technology. There is no local area network connection with the next desk, and documents have been transferred in hard copy form.
Step 9: Another employee prints out the declaration and stamps it.
Step 10: The bank desk. All the fees, VAT and duties are paid.
Step 11: Waiting for the bank transfer to happen, which takes about 30 minutes. Another stamp on the declaration.
Step 12: The client pays the valuables fee.
Step 13: Desk 30. The client get his or her package.
If you have had a similar experience at Sofia Customs please share it by emailing editor@sofiaecho.com with a copy to kauza@capital.bg
Kapital weekly, issue 1, 2010
-
Print
-
Send via email
- Translate to
-
Share:
Comments
To post comments, please, Login or Register.
Please read the The Sofia Echo forum comments policy.
Bulgaria to simplify customs clearance procedures
A pilot project in Sofia aims to simplify the procedure for clearing goods shipped from EU and non-EU countries to Bulgaria.
Bulgarian Customs vow to process goods sent from outside the EU within 20 minutes
After the strong public outcry, the Customs Agency and Bulgarian Posts decided to shorten the bureaucratic procedure starting from January 25 2010.
More in this category
Bulgaria’s wine industry: Let the bottle begin
A presidential call for a promotional campaign, a legislative attempt at reform, and some signs of growth in hardy soil.
In the land of blood, honey – and controversy
Mixed reception in the Balkans and abroad for Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut.
Behind the criminal curtain
Bulgaria, like the rest of eastern Europe, still has a poor image in the UK press.
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: Angels and demons?
The State Security scandal is likely to prove damaging but not, ultimately, destructive.
The smell of ice
A cutting-edge guide to ice skating in Sofia and other cities.
© 2000-2012, Sofia Echo Media Ltd.
Web Design by RIZN
Sofia Echo Media is part of the Economedia Group.
The news and information content on this website is provided by our editorial team and is copyrighted.
Any unauthorised reproduction or use of it is strictly forbidden. Reproduction of this website's content is permitted only
with prior written permission from the Editor-in-Chief, should be propertly acredited and provide an active link back to our site.
Comments posted by the website's visitors are independent of the editorial materials and do not represent the views of sofiaecho.com.
Sofia Echo Media cannot be held responsible for the statements contained in visitor comments.
The percentаge change in the shares' prices are based on the price of the last transaction of the current session compared to the
price of the last transaction of the previous session. Bulgarian Stock Exchange data is not real-time, but updated every 15 minutes,
and should not be used as a basis for decisions about buying or selling stock options.
- Economedia Group portfolio:
- In Bulgarian:
-
Business:
Капитал,
Кариери,
Пазари,
Ho Re Mag,
Регал,
Градът.bg,
Одит,
Foton.bg,
Online shop
- News: Дневник, Европа, Foreign Policy - България
- IT: IDG.BG, Computerworld, PC World, CIO, Networkworld
- Entertainment: Бакхус
-
In English:
The Sofia Echo
The underlying issue is that Bulgaria will remain a poor country because of this type of administrative nightmare. Nobody will want to do business or live here because it's too complicated.
We had a similar issue at KAT (car registration) where incompetence breeds corruption.
Civil servants act like they're doing you a favour. Whilst police officers deliver the relevant papers to "business men" at the cafeteria outside to speed up their application process.
And everytime you pay a bribe however small you feed the system.
[...]
Read the full comment /> Ironically, I am sure that drug and arms dealers don't face the same bureaucratic constraints.
Bulgaria needs to develop a civil service ethos, serving the State and the people.
SADLY..BEEN THERE, SEEN IT, DONE IT :-(
Lets be honest, 99.9% of the staff in the customs offices are just not interested and if there's a way for them to receive an easy cash back-hand payment then the whole world knows the Bulgarians will do it. Unfortunately it's just typical of so many other govt' depts that run along the same lines..you know thats true! The sad part is that by being so underhand, greedy, ill trained and to have & show no interest in helping people by doing their job properly... one day it will come [...]
Read the full comment back and bite them in the backside...COME ON WAKE UP BULGARIA...CATCH UP WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD..OTHERWISE YOU WILL GET LEFT BEHIND...people are getting sick of being 'ripped off' by the officials & anyone in a uniform..being renown world wide for being incapable of organising a postal system & government depts that seems to be forever on the take is not something to be proud of (if you ever pay a bribe your not helping anyone except some lazy, greedy, dishonest, low life to take your hard earned money for themselves)...the normal hardworking law abiding people of this country are better than that & they don't deserve to have the reputation that the rest of the country has, that is caused by 'official' workers being inept, greedy, underhand,dishonest etc. GET YOUR GOVERNMENT BE RESPONCIBLE FOR ITS STAFF AND TO SERVE YOU PROPERLY.
haha, great story/article/idea!
If I were any more vocal, my story would have trumped that.
I didn't pay anything to collect my belongings I shipped from Canada, but I had to lose at least 2 days and had to visit not 14 offices, but 3 distinct addresses.
In the end, they cleared my stuff without any import tax, which is great, but it took long...
And I ripped my brand new pants on their banister.
Dear fellow readers: Of course Customs could simplify the procedures to make them user friendly. But then that would reduce opportunities for Customs employees to demand and collect bribes to "expedite" what should ordinarily be a simple procedure.
It's about time that someone wrote this story, and since we can laugh about it now, really enjoyed reading this article. My husband and I recently endured what can only be described as the 9th circle of h@ll when we imported our personal effects from overseas. We thought it would be relatively easy. After all, I have worked in international logistics for 14 years (several as a customs broker) and my husband is a Bulgarian citizen, we figured between the two of us, it would be no problem. We spent DAYS dealing with the paperwork and what was a minimum [...]
Read the full comment of 6 trips to Customs (to be honest, we lost count we went there so many times). What was probably the worst though was the total lack of knowledge. I cannot tell you how many times we were given completely wrong information from the people that work at Customs. The average citizen should not have to become a customs expert in Bulgaria, Customs officials should be the experts. We tried to look up the relevant laws, but there is also a lot of conflicting information (mostly from the internet, but who knows how often that is updated with new information). I was a bit surprised actually to know that the customs clearance procedure here is still done manually. I was told that BG should be able to do this electronically, perhaps this year. This would be a huge win for Bulgaria. I kept wondering if businesses who are importing have to go through this. If so, I have to imagine how it can really be detrimental to businesses. It sort of became our second job for awhile. Happily, in the end, we did get our stuff.
Why re-invent the wheel. Customs should find out what the procedures are in say Germany and Austria and simply translate to Bulgarian and issue as a directive to all customs offices.
In Bulgaria if there is a easy way or hard way, the hard way will always prevail.