Economic damages in the customs sector during 2005-2010

Open Data Albania has conducted a research about the economic damages in the customs sector during the period 2005-2010. Economic damages are caused in the customs sector as a result of actions: avoidance of customs duties and erroneous calculations of tariffs, the difference in calculating the customs clearance and transportation costs, reduction of fines values without legal basis; non application or poor application of penalties for violation of smuggling or considered “administrative violations”; value added taxes (VAT) evasion by entities that have imported and received at the time of clearance of payment; violation of clearance procedures, violations of the warehouse regime customs etc..

For the period 2005-2010, the value of economic damages in the customs sector is 3,597,585,000 Albanian Lek. The highest value of economic damages was recorded in 2005 and 2006, at the level of 998,725,000 Albanian Lek and 884,174,000 Albanian Lek respectively, while the lowest level of economic damage is recorded in 2009 at the level of 300,252,000 Albanian Lek.
Economic damages in this sector have the tendency to decrease as a result of several factors such as the perfection of the audit system and the conduction of online transactions.

Online operations facilitate the transfer of data to central server as a consequence the data became widely available. One of the reasons that have also affected the reduction damages is also the removal of tariffs and customs and the decline of reference prices in European Union countries.
The increased interaction with the corresponding customs, which enables real-time confirmation of the data, is another factor that has contributed to the reduction of economic damages.

^{Source: Supreme State Audit (SSA)
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania (ODA)}

Damages in the customs sector versus total damages had an erratic behavior. Lower ratio is achieved in 2007 and 2009, to the extent of 5.95% and 4.11% of total economic damages.

While in 2010, violations of financial effects reached the level of 22.28% of total damages. Economic damages in the customs sector versus total economic damages did not pose a direct connection between them. Correlation coefficient of 0.14 indicates that the damages in the customs sector moves in the same direction as the total damages, but on a much smaller size.

^{Source: Supreme State Audit (SSA)
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania (ODA)}

The data are presented in the table below:

^{Source: Supreme State Audit (SSA)
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania (ODA)}