22 April 2021, 11:28
On April 20, the first online meeting of the working group on drafting amendments to the legislation to address the problem of gray imports of mobile terminals took place.
The participants of the meeting noted: "Smuggling and gray imports of mobile terminals lead to large-scale losses of the state budget, increase corruption, criminalize their circulation within the country and form the basis for increasing the tax burden on bona fide business."
During the meeting, its participants drew attention to two significant issues that need to be addressed comprehensively:
- illegal import of mobile phones: official data show that 30% of imports are illegal, but according to many experts, the share of "white" imports is less than 20% of the real;
- criminal industry built on theft and resale of mobile phones. The Ministry of Internal Affairs reports more than 100,000 such thefts annually, but in reality the figure is much higher. After all, most victims do not even turn to law enforcement, considering such an appeal hopeless. Police officers informally estimate that one of the nine victims filed the theft report.
During the meeting it was also noted that Ukraine already had experience in combating smuggling: in 2009 the accounting of IMEI codes was introduced, which functioned until 2014. In just six months of operation of this system, the amount of budget revenues increased by over UAH 500 million, and in 2013 the budget received about UAH 1.3 billion. After the shutdown of the system, revenues began to fall sharply despite the increase in the number and cost of mobile phones bought by Ukrainians.