Customs collects 77m euros less for six months

Kosovo Customs spokesman Adriatic Stavileci tells Online Economy that this decline is due to the lack of imports of some products.

The next six month's customs revenues have reached 580m euros. If compared to the same period last year, we have a decrease of 77m euros less in revenues, because consumption has dropped, not for other reasons, but due to the lack of imports of certain products. There are certain locations here where import declined, but we can say we have categories of different products that have been reduced during the time of the pandemic”, he says.

Import reductions are mainly luxury products, such as oil and vehicles, while saying that there are 30 percent fewer vehicles than last year.

We can take luxury products as general. If we take vehicles alone, we have about 30 percent fewer vehicles in import than last year, which are a significant source of revenues but we also have a reduction of oil in terms of value because of the worldwide loss of oil imports and normally that this has reflected directly in revenues of”, he says.

Stavileci says that most citizens do not direct their luxury expenses, but to essential expenses, such as food, hygienic products, which have great weights but are of little value.

“We are in touch with other countries' customs and it doesn't mean that we make exceptions in terms of the decline in revenues, but in all countries of the region have reportedly reduced revenues, the reason is very simple, because there is a lack of consumption. At present, a large portion of the population does not direct their expenses to luxury expenses, but it does direct them to essential expenses, such as food, hygienic products, or other, which have great weights but, as a result, there are not many”.

Since the Kosovo Government's recent decisions on lifting the measures, Serbia has exported around 72m euros as the value of products, but says this figure could increase by the end of this year.

“From Serbia we have an increase in imports. We can say that it has arrived since recent decisions on removing the measures, we have about 72 million as the value of products which have been imported from Serbia, we expect that by the end of the year to reach as much as 140m euros of imports from Serbia, but still still is still far away as imports have been from Serbia in past periods. We have after a period when Serbia has had 450m euros in exports to Kosovo”.

Stavileci said that with this revenue trend, they will try to register over 1 billion euros in the state budget.