The new information systems are intended for exporters and carriers engaged in international trade, as well as for customs agencies.
The aim of this change is to bring customs formalities for export and transit into conformity with the requirements of the Union Customs Code, to monitor the movement of goods more effectively and to ensure safety and security. In addition to improving supervision, the additional aim is to provide a more convenient service for customers.
Ursula Riimaa, ETCB’s Deputy Director General for Customs: “Customer convenience and business efficiency are a priority for us. We are ready to work closely with our customers to ensure a smooth transition to new systems that help economic operators to successfully develop their business. The new systems are more advanced and allow economic operators to submit large-scale export and transit declarations, which eliminates the need to distribute goods to several declarations," adding that in the case of export, the possibility to present goods and lodge a declarations in different Member States will be added, and a new exit procedure will be applied for the declaration of aircraft and ship supplies. “The new information systems are accessible in three languages, are based on a design that is already familiar to economic operators and is operating on a new technical platform,” Riimaa said.
In order to introduce the new information systems, a scheduled maintenance is carried out in customs information systems from 15:00 on 30 September to 08:00 on 1 October. All pending declarations will be migrated to the new systems. Economic operators currently submitting declarations in Complex and NCTS do not have to apply for access permissions to submit customs declarations in the new systems, the access permissions are opened automatically.
For the development of the export and transit information systems, the Estonian Tax and Customs Board has received funding from the European Regional Development Fund in the amount of 1.4 million euros for the development of the export system AES and 1.6 million euros for the development of the transit system NCTS. The total cost of the projects is 5.7 million euros. The projects lasted from summer 2021 to autumn 2023.
The development projects were carried out in cooperation with the team of the Information Technology Centre of the Ministry of Finance and software companies Cybernetica AS and Nortal AS. Over the past two years, the project teams have completed a total of four major projects related to customs information systems. “It can be said that this is the most unique consolidated project of recent years, where such large-scale information systems important for the customs authorities of Estonia and other EU Member States are being introduced at the same time,” Riimaa said.
The ETCB asks all customers to inform customs of any concerns or issues that may arise from the introduction of the new systems in order to find quick solutions for them.
Useful information
General information and instructions (in Estonian)
