Outsourcing of foreign economic activities

For the directors who lack experience in solving such issues as customs clearance, export of goods, organization of international cargo transportation, it is extremely complicated to understand all the peculiarities and subtle differences of the domestic and especially foreign customs legislation. In this case, the best solution is outsourcing of foreign economic activities.

The Russian customs legislation is known for its constant changes that need to be monitored at the appropriate times. For example, in case of wrong declaring of the goods, their customs value will adjusted (CVA – customs value adjustment), the company will be subject to an administrative fine, and the goods listed in the register of intellectual property and imported to the Russian Federation without the relevant permission of the contract holder will be detained and returned to the supplier at best and destroyed at the worst.

The evidence from practice shows that in case of CVA, the process of recompensing funds from the customs takes from 3 to 6 months. This will require an extended package of documents confirming that the goods were legally imported to the Russian Federation at the actual transaction price, with the supplier of the goods filing an evidentiary letter to the customs. In case it is impossible to recompense the CVA, the Agent takes legal actions and the issue is solved by judicial procedure. It is clear that such work requires additional time expenditures. By outsourcing foreign economic activity, your company will be free from paperwork and interaction with customs officers.

Even slightest discrepancies in commercial, shipping, transportation, and permitting documents afford the customs authorities ground for suspecting probable non-compliance with the customs legislation of the Russian Federation, which results in the customs authorities performing additional inspection procedures (usually, they include inspection by technical means of the customs control): piece count and weighing of cargo packages, photo and video shooting, measurement of a radiation level and chemical composition, sampling with further examination at a forensic agency of the customs administration.

Besides the fact that in such cases, a participant of foreign economic activity bears additional costs for moving the goods to a temporary storage warehouse, loading and unloading operations, and storage at TSW, such inspections often results in the customs authorities revealing the facts of non-declaring or inaccurate declaring of the goods during customs clearance procedures, with responsibility for such actions being introduced in the Administrative and the Criminal Codes of the Russian Federation.

One of the important reasons for preferring to outsource foreign economic activities is cost reduction. Another reason is to release the company from organizing business processes that are not the basic ones; thus, freeing up more time and human resources to concentrate on development of the company’s key fields.

This service also makes it possible to organize prompt delivery of the goods in case if the customer has to operate under severe time constraints and does not have an opportunity to study the legislation and prepare all the required documents.