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Customs controls help prevent risks to biodiversity and ensure compliance with environmental requirements, an Armenian State Revenue Committee (SRC) official told Armenpress during COP17, as she presented the Committee’s initiatives and work in this area.
Nelly Kharatyan, Deputy Head of the SRC’s Specialized Center-Department for Classification and Customs Tariff Issues, sat down with Armenpress to discuss how customs controls help prevent violations and raise awareness among businesses and individuals.
“Customs control inherently includes a preventive component. This means that we try to raise awareness among businesses as much as possible so that they can, on their own initiative, avoid potential violations. The best platform for raising awareness at present is the ExIm information platform, launched at the initiative of the State Revenue Committee. It has been operating since April and provides information at any stage when a business or an individual intends to carry out imports, exports or transit. The platform is designed to present and explain complex legal language, which may sometimes be difficult to understand, in simpler and clearer terms. It is important to clearly understand and remember that all customs operations must be carried out in accordance with the provisions of legal acts,” Kharatyan said.
She stressed the importance of making requirements for the movement of wild plants, animals listed in the Red Book, and goods of environmental significance accessible to citizens and businesses in advance.
“Through awareness-raising, we warn against and prevent potential violations of the rules, because sometimes violations are not committed with malicious intent. The problem is simply that a business may be unaware of the regulations in force. This platform makes it possible to avoid that problem. People need to be aware of and informed about the applicable regulations in advance and do everything possible to act strictly within the framework of the regulations in force. For our part, we have tried to do everything possible to make this process easy, accessible and understandable for them,” Kharatyan concluded.