[07 March 2008]

By: Abdul-Wadoud al-Ghaili

SANA'A- March 07 (Saba)- Chairman of the Customs Authority (CA) Ali al-Zabidi has revealed that the authority is preparing a blacklist for traders who breach customs law.

In an interview with Saba, al-Zabidi said that solutions to tackle issues of customs need safe measures and care for employee of the authority.

Saba: what are the key reforms taken in Customs Authority during two years ago?

Al-Zabidi: The reforms focused on two domains, one on legislation and the second on administration. The authority worked to review laws associated with customs tariff and correct some customs measures.

Regarding the administrative reforms, the authority has conducted a study over
restructuring the authority, held several training courses for employees, appointed skilled personnel and rehabilitated certain customs outlets in some regions like in Mukalla, and Taiz airport as well as set up new customs centers after agreement with neighboring countries within joint cooperation.

The authority also has supplied these centers with up-to-date customs systems.

Saba: what is importance of these reforms for the national economy?

Al-Zabidi: The reforms targeted increase of the economic activities and bettered climate of competition for national products, in addition to attracting further investments in productive sector.

The reforms aimed at providing the state treasury with billions of Riyals. Such reforms also help in reducing acts of smuggling of several basic goods directly and indirectly.

Saba: What are the negative impacts resulted due to amendments to law No. 41of customs tariff for 2005?

Al-Zabidi: Currently, we are studying those impacts since the government decided to make amendments to the law. Two years ago, the authority conducted several studies on financial affects of the law which showed that the state treasury loses billions of dollars yearly due to customs exemption granted by the law. Soon, we will present suggestion to review some articles associated with tariff. Throughout reviewing 2006 report of the authority on revenues, you can see that the total of financial impact for that year reached around YR 23 billion because of reduction of tariff categories in accordance with the law No. 41.

Saba: How could the authority compensate this loss?

Al-Zabidi: We could compensate that loss by canceling exemptions, but that of course needs for support of the government and Parliament in order to get further safe resources for the state budget and combat one of the corruption sources caused by these exemption.

Saba: Does it mean that exemptions make obstacles in the authority work?

Al-Zabidi: The exemption is a key problem. Frankly, I could say that exemptions are not only a problem facing the authority's work, but there is a problem in making clearness for calculating sum of exemptions which might reach hundreds of millions of Yemeni
Riyals.

Saba: What are the solutions to tackle this problem?

Al-Zabidi: Regarding the problem of exemptions, we did some amendments to the customs law to meet current changes in the customs work. The amendments aim at
canceling exemptions and making customs work easy. The drat of these amendments has been sent to the cabinet.

As for other issues, we are always following issues happening in customs outlets and improving condition of the customs employees and training them to improve their skills.

Saba: How does the authority deal with violations?

Al-Zabidi: The authority forms a committee to study those breaches and, in its turn, it raises a report to us on suggested procedures and then we take legal measures.

Lately, we discovered a big action of forgoing customs documents in Taiz governorate. The Taiz Customs Office seized 45 cases of for going which caused losses at YR 4 billion. Therefore, the authority sent six persons to the public prosecution including employees in the office to investigate with them. The police is still hunting other eight involved persons who are at large right now.

Now, we have six monitoring committees to review and monitor works of customs in Taiz, Sana'a, Sayoun, Dar Saad and Hodeidah. There are measures to increase fines on traders who cheat in their customs documents. They utilize the present law to pay lesser fines to release their goods.

Saba: There are claims that the authority ignores several corruption cases, what is your comment?

Al-Zabidi: There are many who are interested to harm reputation of the authority due to efforts of combating corruption. It is not new, any measures associated with corruption face criticism and claims published by some newspapers that do not look for the truth.

We are working to combat corruption in all customs outlets. There are legal bodies that have the right to monitor our works.

Saba: Could you please tell us about the steps of modernizing the customs sector?

Al-Zabidi: The Customs Authority has achieved good steps in the process of modernization. The project of restructuring the authority will be implemented by this year. The draft of amended customs law was raised to the cabinet. We made in the draft required amendments to access of Yemen into World Trade Organization.

Regarding Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems (SCADA), the authority applied the system in most of its customs circles. It is working to use X-Rays and hold training courses to qualify its employees.

Saba: What are the future plans for going ahead with modernization process?

Al-Zabidi: We will work to develop SCADA system by inserting new programs to monitor revenues and all customs acts around the country. The authority has plans to receive experts this year to help finalize infrastructure of setting up risk management to enhance efforts of the authority to combat acts of customs cheating and enhance security protection.

Soon, the SCADA system will be linked with X-Rays system to strengthen control of the authority for all customs outlets and prevent smuggling acts.

AH/AM

Saba