The Government has approved mandatory application of the “one-stop” clearance procedure at all customs offices starting from February 1, 2018

On November 22, following the proposal of the Ministry of Finance, the Government approved the mandatory application of the “one-stop” clearance procedures by all businesses and customs offices starting from February 1, 2018.

What’s it about?

After the launch of the “one-stop” clearance procedure on August 1, 2016, the Ministry of Finance permanently monitored its operation and incrementally extended options for business to use this simplified procedure of customs clearance.
For the further development and operation of the “one-stop” information exchange system, the Ministry of Finance prepared amendments to the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers “On Some Issues Related to the Implementation of the “One-Stop” Principle during Customs, Sanitary, Veterinary, Phyto-Sanitary, Ecological, Radiological Control and Other Types of State Control”.

The amendments include:
- extension of the “one-stop” procedure onto the traffic of goods in all customs regimes (currently, it is only applied for import and export) and under regular and preliminary customs declarations containing complete data (currently, it is only applied for some of the customs declaration types for import and export);
- reduced number of scanned documents due to the submission of all necessary data in the preliminary declarations;
- the time span available for the controlling authorities to decide on the physical examination has been reduced from 24 to 12 working hours;
- the time span available for the controlling authorities to decide on the release of goods leaving the customs territory of Ukraine has been reduced from 24 to 4 hours.
Also, the Ministry of Finance is implementing the monthly monitoring of the operation of the “one-stop” procedure as well as seminars in all regions of Ukraine aimed to address detected problems.

What’s the benefit?

The mandatory application of the “one-stop” procedure starting from February 1, 2018, will ensure equal terms for all businesses, enable effective state control instead and will make it possible to assess the work of all involved state agencies and customs offices.

More about the “one-stop” procedure:
• “One-stop” procedure is a united electronic system for data exchange enabling various controlling bodies and customs offices to automatically exchange data about shipments passing the border of Ukraine and about the results of their examination; 
• The implementation of the “one-stop” procedure was decided on May 25, 2016, when the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers No. 364 “On Some Issues Related to the Implementation of the “One-Stop” Principle during Customs, Sanitary, Veterinary, Phyto-Sanitary, Ecological, Radiological Control and Other Types of State Control” was adopted;
• The above Decree also determines the rules of information exchange between fiscal authorities, other state agencies as well as businesses using electronic tools.