Economic damage in the customs sector during 2008-2012 period

Economic damage in the customs sector over the years has been ranked as one of the four sectors with the highest economic damage caused to the State Budget. It comes as a result of evading customs duties and tariffs miscalculation, violation of procedures in the clearance of goods, reduction of the values of penalties without a legal basis, etc. Open Data Albania has taken into consideration the damage reported by the processed audits by the Supreme State Audit for 2008-2012.

^{Source : Supreme State Audit
Processing and comments: ODA}

The year 2008 marks the highest amount of economic damage recorded in the customs sector. With an absolute approximately 694.6 million ALL value, the damage from this sector is ranked third after tax and procurement damage. By audited entities, the Customs in Tirana (about 349.8 million) and Vlora (254.6 million) accounted for almost 87% of total damage in this sector. Year 2009 represents  a decrease of nearly 56% of the customs economic damage compared with a year ago, making the total weight fall against total damage from 17.2% in 2008, to 4.11% in 2009.

In 2010, there was a slight increase in the recorded damage, which is mainly caused by Durres?s Customs Branch (about 68%). After this year, there is a downward trend in the economic damage in the customs sector, mainly as a result of the abolition of customs duties, the performance of online activities and their transition to the central server, coordination of actions with the homologous customs and the fall of the reference prices to EU countries. Thus, in 2011, the damage was recorded as 26% of the damage in 2008, again caused to a large extent by the Durres?s Customs Branch, while in 2012, this damage recorded the minimum value of the period under review , 62 million, less than 10% of the damage in 2008.

The graph below shows the weight of the damage in this sector versus the total economic damage, total expenditure of the budget and GDP.

^{Source : Supreme State Audit
Processing and comments: ODA}

The brunt of the damage in the customs sector constitutes in: firstly, unpaid customs duties in the clearances of several articles and secondly: most of the duties for entities operating with authorization for inward processing procedure. The following graph shows the composition of the customs damage and the weight of each versus the total damage in this sector.

^{Source : Supreme State Audit
Processing and comments: ODA}

1. ^{The data on the economic damage for the 2008-2012 period were obtained from the SAI Annual Report for each respective year.}
2. ^{The data on the total expenditure for the State Budget were obtained  from the Fiscal Bulletin for the last 4 months of each year.}
3. ^{The GDP data refer to no. 1 DCM, dated 23.01.2013 “On approval of the macroeconomic and fiscal framework” for the 2014-2016 period.}