We have previously advised on the customs claims which are frequently being imposed in the port of Nikolaev, and in particular we see fines for failure to declare the ship's stores and any goods on board.
We have actually seen an increase in the number of fines in the past two months and we remind all parties concerned that before entering this port almost everything on board shall be inserted in the customs' declaration. This include medicines (drugs), cash (both that of the ship and the crew members' personal savings), barrels/tins of paint or oil, as well as any other stores and various commodities on board.
The Nikolaev customs officers also perform soundings of the bunker tanks and a fine is inevitable if any discrepancy between their findings and figures declared by the chief engineer is established. The sum of the fines are rather big and is calculated as twice the cost of the undeclared goods, and inaccurately declared bunkers leads to particularly high fines.
Our statistics shows that on average one ship is getting fined by the customs every week and we would like to urge the ships' masters to adhere closely to the ship's agents' recommendations/instructions and to declare almost everything on board in order to comply with the strict requirements. As a rule the ship's agents provide master/owners with the customs requirements in their pre-arrival notices, but in many cases these requirements have not been adhered to.
The Association is grateful to Mr. Igor Cherezov at DIAS, Ukraine for contributing to this update.