Historical Background

On September 20, 1991, following Resolution 1101-XII “On the Customs Service of the Republic of Belarus” of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus, the Belarusian office of the USSR State Customs Control was transformed into the State Customs Committee of the Republic of Belarus. The resolution also brought all the USSR customs facilities that were stationed on the territory of Belarus under the supervision of the newly-formed committee. That was the beginning of a new era in the history of the Belarusian customs service, which saw it evolve into a law-enforcement body defending economic interests of the country.

Historically, Belarus has always been a territory on the way of major freight and passenger railway and motorcar transport flows from East to West and from West to East of the European continent. After Belarus gained sovereignty in 1991, it realized it had to place more effort in guarding its economic interests and that was the main mission of customs bodies.

Before 1991, there were four customs stations in Belarus with nearly 1,500 staff. Despite of socio-economic difficulties the country faced after gaining sovereignty, there was an urgent need to create an integrated system of customs service within a short period of time in order to ensure economic security of the sovereign state. The work on forging customs legislation started at that time.

A law “On the Fundamentals of Organization of the Customs Service of the Republic of Belarus” was passed in 1992. The document stipulated legal and organizational aspects of customs service and outlined its mission and goals which were aimed at protecting economic interests of the state. In that year the following documents were adopted: the Republic of Belarus State Customs Committee Regulations and the Customs Service Charter.

In 1993, the Customs Code and a law “On Customs Tariff” were passed. Since 1995, specialists have been working on unifying customs legislations of Belarus and Russia in the framework of the Customs Union. In 1997, a new wording of the law of the Republic of Belarus “On Customs Tariff” was adopted; a new Customs Code of the Republic of Belarus that was introduced on July 17, 1998, has become the major legal document regulating the work of Belarusian customs bodies. On February 2, 2000, new Republic of Belarus State Customs Committee Regulations were adopted.

On July 1, 2002, a Commodity Nomenclature of Foreign Economic Activity (CNFEA) of the Republic of Belarus was introduced, which had been developed on the basis of a new (2002) wording of the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System. The new nomenclature, unlike the earlier nine-digit classification system of the CIS CNFEA, is based on a ten-digit coding system. Such a classification allows to specify commodity nomenclature giving an CNFEA individual code to the goods which have the same names but different technical or consumer properties.

Today the new wording of the Customs Code of the Republic of Belarus is being developed.
The heads of the customs service of Belarus in the last 15 years were the following individuals:
Piotr Krechko, state advisor of the customs service 2nd rank, 1991-1992, 1994-1997;

Gennadiy Shkurd, state advisor of the customs service 2nd rank, 1992-1994;

Vikentiy Makarevich, state advisor of the customs service 3rd rank, 1997-2001;

Alexander Shpilevskiy, state advisor of the customs service 3rd rank, since September 2001