Rossiiskaya Gazeta: “Russian Government set to overhaul border infrastructure”
Pierre Sidibe
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected a section of the Russian-Finnish border and discussed ways to optimise the state border infrastructure at a meeting of the border control commission.
The second day of Mr Putin's visit to St Petersburg had an entirely different agenda from the first. The Prime Minister did not make any momentous statements on international issues. Nor did he voice any concern about the future of the agribusiness.
The Prime Minister was more interested in border control issues, in particular the operation of a local customs checkpoint. Mr Putin visited a snowbound forest in Torfyanovka, where the largest lorry checkpoint is located.
A factsheet handed out to journalists said the Torfyanovka checkpoint, established in 1944, had employed just one person at that time. Right now, its 260 officials have a lot of work to do. A queue of lorries 2 kilometres long was visible on the Russian side.
"Long queues are still commonplace during inspection and clearance proceedings," Mr Putin said. In fact, the freight turnover has dwindled considerably due to the global financial crisis.
A local inspection and clearance complex successfully handles all types of vehicles in Torfyanovka. Mr Putin was shown expensive furs, machine-gun disks, computer hard drives and other goods confiscated from smugglers.
The Prime Minister nodded with satisfaction because this meant that budgetary allocations had not been spent in vain.
Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said it was crucial to set up a joint data exchange network that would link border force units and customs houses, which would make the work far more efficient, and that the decision to establish such a network had already been made.
Next year, Torfyanovka and other checkpoints will switch over to the mandatory preliminary customs declaration system that will inform them about all goods and vehicles crossing the border. Instead of two hours, each vehicle will be cleared in 30 minutes.
"The situation will not improve drastically unless we create a modern and reliable border infrastructure," Mr Putin said.
The Prime Minister told the commission that the creation of the Russian-Belarusian-Kazakh customs union must be expedited.
The newspaper's sources said unified customs tariffs would be formulated in January-June 2009 and unified customs legislation harmonised by late 2009. The three countries will standardise their trade regime with regard to third countries by late 2010.
"The Russian-Kazakh border sector deserves special attention because criminals are taking advantage of its relative transparency and inadequate technical infrastructure. The south sector remains dangerous in terms of drug trafficking," Putin stressed.
The Prime Minister said construction of checkpoints for the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in Sochi, a popular resort on the Black Sea coast, was another priority.
After that, the border control commission's meeting continued its work without journalists and discussed security issues behind closed doors.
