TIRANA, July.11- P쳰arim Dervishi, head of the General Customs Office, has acknowledged that black market smuggling of cigarettes has flourished during the first half of 2007. Official numbers for the period from January through June show that Albanian customs officials have processed only half of the volume of cigarettes compared to last year. “During these six months we have processed at the customs offices 1429 tons of cigarettes or 1270 tons less than the same period last year. The most problematic area for this remains that of Shkodra with the northern border point to Montenegro,” Dervishi said.
The decrease in revenues can also be explained technically, according to Dervishi. Given that the administration announced a prior increase of the excise tax, it gave incentives to businesses to move their goods through customs in advance of the tax increase. However, observers were skeptical about this explanation since even before the announcement of the tax increase the customs figures were lower than compared to 2006.
Cigarette smuggling, according to the Customs head, is a local phenomenon that has increased. The international community has voiced similar concerns as the head of “EUCAFAO- Albania”, Vito Malanga, declared that the most porous entry points remain in the south. The international organizations which have studied the problem have asked the secret services to help with confronting the smuggling.
Plans
Dervishi said that his office plans to reach 2006 targets despite the slow start. Last year set records in cigarette revenues collected by the state. Even with the smuggling, the customs office has collected ten percent higher revenues, in general, adding 41,087 billion leks, 3.8 billion more than the planned figure, to the state budget. The total figures are 16 percent higher than the same period last year. The opposition has declared that this rise is abusive given that it is based on reference prices applied to businesses in selective ways. Former Finance Minister and current socialist MP, Arben Malaj, has explained that even when an importer brings the bill of the goods with exact values, customs officials use the reference prices which cause abuses and inflate the real revenues by as much as 75 percent. The claim has been denied by Deputy Finance Minister, Florjon Mima, who said reference prices are being used in only 22 percent of the cases.
