Customs duty confusion angers Russian express delivery services

8 April 2015

Express delivery services in Russia are enraged after the Federal Customs Service is claimed to have said that all low-value shipments sent abroad will now be subject to a customs duty.

According to reports, companies will now have to pay between 750 rubles and 1,000 rubles - $13 to $17 - duty on each package worth 200 euros ($217) or under.

A separate customs form will also have to be processed for each package which may seriously delay customs operations, president of the Association of Express Delivery Companies, Vladimir Sarkisov, has told the newspaper, Kommersant.

This could prove troublesome for express delivery companies, which previously exported 400 to 500 packages a day under one registration, he added.

However, deputy head of the Federal Customs Service, Tatyana Golendeyeva, told news agency Interfax that her agency intends to ask First Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Shuvalov, to cancel the duty on packages.

While the Kommersant report indicated that customs rules had been changed, Golendeyeva said that, in fact, the duty was not new — the issue was that different customs offices had applied the rule differently, and the Federal Customs Service wanted to clear up the confusion.

Follow Chamber International on Twitter @ChamberInt and on Facebook here.