Duty-free stores could reappear at border crossings

Duty-free stores could be set up at the border crossing points of Moldova. The outlets will sell only locally sourced goods. The Parliament adopted a respective bill in second reading on July 19, amending the Customs Code. No value added tax will be levied for placing and selling goods in the duty-free shops. An authorisation for opening a duty-free store at border crossings costs 5,000 lei Given that the delimitation and securitisation procedure on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border has not been finalised and the border crossing points do not have yet the necessary infrastructure, the Government proposes creating at first duty-free shops that will sell made-in-Moldova goods only at the Moldovan-Romanian border, which is an EU border. The bill authors say that the respective shops will offer new possibilities and ways of facilitating the export of Moldovan goods to the EU markets. In 2002, the Parliament introduced amendments to the Customs Code, which restricted duty-free outlets to international airports and onboard international flights. Shortly afterwards, the Customs Department ordered the closing of all the duty-free shops that did not met the new requirements. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights found Moldova guilty of closing such a shop and ordered that it pay over half a million EUR in damages.