TIRANA, June 12/ATA/-The regional conference of Western Balkans Customs administrations was held on Tuesday in Tirana aiming at finding new mechanisms to ease the trade exchanges between the countries of the region.
Attending the conference were heads of the customs’ administrations of the regional countries.
Albania’s Minister of Finance and Economy Arben Ahmetaj delivered the greeting speech to the conference.
Minister Ahmetaj emphasized the need of eliminating tariffs which create barriers to trade exchanges. He appealed to the countries of the region for the unilateral recognition of some certificates.
“The administrations of the region face another challenge that has to do with interconnection because we don’t have yet a developed infrastructure, mainly the road infrastructure which will connect the countries of the region and facilitate the trade exchanges between them”, said the head of public finances.
According to Minister Ahmetaj, the customs administrations must find the proper mechanisms to ease the business and cut the time spent following procedures at the customs points.
The minister highlighted the importance that cooperation assumes not only in the regional level, but even beyond like with the British, American or EU law enforcement institutions which would enable a better fight against economic crime and trafficking.
“One cannot fight economic crime neither with bureaucracy nor with paper procedures. We must overcome these barriers between us and always be a step forward with our pro-active approach”, emphasized Ahmetaj.
In this context, the minister mentioned several valid agreements on exchange of data and information related to analysis of risk. /a.gjonaj/ j.p/p.s./
