12 January 2010
A round table meeting was conducted on discussing the ways of improving the foreign economic activities through simplifying export/import procedures, organized by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of RT with technical support of Project on «Trade Liberalization and Customs Reforms» by USAID and Project on «Promoting Regional Economic Cooperation in Central Asia» by GTZ.

The organizers of the event familiarized the participants of the round table with the practices of such countries as Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Lithuania on running reforms aimed at enhancing the environment for implementing trade activities and also elucidated the basic issues of foreign trade system in Tajikistan and justified the need for the Government to take immediate measures in this regard.

The organizers of the round table paid a special attention to the matters of reducing the number of documents required for regulating export/import operations. The world practice shows that three documents only are needed for implementing export/import operations (transport documents, invoice and freight customs declaration), while in Tajikistan the number of required documents accounts to ten.

The participants of the round table proposed to define a state body, which will be responsible for promoting reforms, and therefore recommended establishing an inter ministerial working group and a commission, which will be given to certain powers. This commission will carry out an evaluation of the existing procedures, documents on import/ export, and will propose adequate recommendations on possible reducing of their number. A special place in the process was given to representatives of the private sector.

During the meeting the participants raised the issues, related to inter ministerial coordination and interaction in the process of establishing «One-Stop Shop» on export/import and transit procedures. The participants of the discussion also mentioned the issue of access to information by entrepreneurs, needed for carrying out export/import transactions.

The note by the Secretariat:
It's worth reminding that Tajikistan ranked 179 among 183 countries in the area of foreign trade according to «Doing Business report» by WB for 2010.

A detailed information on the administrative procedures for export/import in Tajikistan and in Central Asia as a whole is available on the website of the Project on «Support to Regional Economic Cooperation in Central Asia» by GTZ: www.trade-ca.org


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