The tax increased smuggling, during 2019%s around 10m euros of goods confiscated

Kosovo Customs Director Bahri Berisha says that during this year alone, some 350 cases of smuggling Serbian and Bosnian goods have been uncovered, amounting to 10m euros.

During this year we have had about 350 discoveries of Serbian and Bosnian products only, while if we speak in total, we have criminal acts discovered by the face of fighting the informal economy, but even smuggling and the detection of evil we have about 10m euros of discovery this year. Only the direct effect, while the indirect effect is much higher because you have managed to prevent many smuggling activities that have somehow legalized import on the other regular side”, he says.

The interest of criminal groups turns out to be in products that potentially make big profits, so they aim to smuggle products with excises.

We've had about 20 million stock cigarettes smuggled in this year. We've had over seven tons of refusal. But what has begun to be more pronounced as smuggled merchandise is also smoking in clay, as we notice many locals have opened up. But there are other products, we have had many pounds of narcotics confiscated. We had guns, ammo. But we also have to pose fake products. We have confiscated about 2 million worth of these goods and which side destroyed”, says Berisha per eo.

A particular importance, Berisha says, is giving to preventing drug smuggling, which, in addition to economic effects, has health effects.

We also give the drug smuggling to a particular substitute because it is a product that has a high cost and brings a similar high profit through criminal ways but also damages public health. This year we have about 10,000 different pieces of packages that we have smuggled through mountain roads that have been introduced into Kosovo”, he says.

Berisha says any change in fiscal policies and the introduction of different taxes affect the activism of criminal groups.

But it says they're mobilised to lower this phenomenon as much as they can, because, as he says, smuggling can never stop 100 percent in any country.

When there is a difference of fiscal policies or the introduction of any safeguard clause criminal groups are more activated and tend to smuggle those products which potentially bring a higher profit to them. But thanks to a reorganization that we have had as customs right after the safeguard clause was imposed, because it has been valued with a high risk of smuggling goods from these two countries. Co-operation with other law enforcement institutions in Kosovo we have managed to prevent and have a good check-up”.

No smuggling country will ever stop 100 per cent because smugglers exploit mountain roads, but this smuggling has mainly developed across the mountain road and has been used by small vehicles and small quantities and some small establishments are supplied in parts of Kosovo. But this has not contributed to the damage to the economy and revenues, but also to the deterioration of competition at the country's” level, he says.

Serbian and Bosnian goods Berisha says they have been replaced by countries in the region, but also by the EU, and that their lack has not been observed.

” We are basically a society that is dependent on import and consumption, these products from Serbia and Bosnia, after a 100 percent safeguard measure has begun to be replaced by other countries. It means there will not be any impact on income, whether positive or negative, because in 2019 products that have come from these two countries have been replaced by other countries in the region or other Southeast European or EU countries. And this compensation is largely made by Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia, Albania, but other EU member states”, Berisha concludes.

The Kosovo government on November 21st, 2018, imposed a 100 per cent tax on Serbian products in response to Serbia's government's aggressive policy against our country.