For more than a year, professionals in the road transport of unaccompanied luggage and private shipments have encountered problems at the port of Beni Ansar in Nador.
According to the Democratic Organization of Professionals and Drivers of International Goods and Consignment Transport (ODTL), drivers of these transports are subject to restrictions and abuses at the Beni Ansar crossing, due to the non-issuance by the Administration Customs and Indirect Taxes (ADII), authorization to clear unaccompanied luggage and special shipments to several companies, which imposes colossal additional costs on their return from abroad.
Joined by MoroccoLatestNews UK For more details, Mohamed Amine Kassmi, regional secretary general of the ODTL in the Oriental and the Rif, first explains to us the process of transporting unaccompanied luggage and special shipments of parcels.
” When creating a company, the Ministry of Transport and Logistics issues an authorization or license to the company to be able to carry out its work, while the ADII issues a decision or authorization to carry out an activity by means of vehicle (the number of vehicles available to the company is mentioned), in order to benefit from the simplified customs clearance procedure for unaccompanied luggage and special shipments entrusted to us by Moroccans residing abroad (MRE)“, explains our interlocutor.
The company, by making the request to benefit from this authorization or “decision”, as qualified by the professionals of the sector, must subscribe to ” a sworn undertaking including a non-guaranteed tender to carry out its activity in compliance with the laws and regulations in force, specific to the customs procedure for the benefit of which the goods transported by you are declared and this, in accordance with the provisions of the Code of customs and indirect taxes approved by the dahir carrying law n°1-77-339 of 25 Chaoual 1397 (October 1977)“, as stipulated in one of the decisions reached MoroccoLatestNews Fr.
So far so good. Except that more than a year ago, this decision, which is normally issued only once, is no longer granted to new companies, or to those wishing to add a vehicle to their fleet, which confronts the professionals to problems, particularly at the port of Beni Ansar in Nador.
But without this decision, how do professionals manage to work?
According to our interlocutor, and when wanting to leave the national territory, customs officials at Beni Ansar fill out a document entitled ” Triptych“, which includes the number of the van and which allows carriers to leave the country. But when returning from abroad via the same passage, the customs officers indicate that they do not recognize this document and require the decision of the ADII. When the carrier does not have this decision, the customs officers ask him to have his vehicle weighed for unaccompanied luggage of MREs.
” When the van, which sometimes weighs 7 tons, is weighed, the carrier pays 1 Euro (10 Dh) for each kilo, this generates colossal sums at customs, in addition to the daily charges, while the luggage transported does not represent only clothes or shoes sent by Moroccans abroad to their families in the country, without forgetting that the price paid by customers for this service is not that high to be able to cover both the charges and the high customs fees when the driver does not have ADII authorization “, explains the trade unionist.
Faced with this problem which has lasted for more than a year and is undermining the business of these professionals, especially after two years of Covid-19 which marked an almost total stoppage of their activity, they came together within the ‘ODTL to seize the competent authorities and find a solution to this problem of non-issuance of this ” decision by the customs which allows them to carry out their work properly, according to our interlocutor.
This week, the representatives of the ODTL went to the ADII in Rabat, to file a request for an emergency hearing with the director general of the ADII on this subject. This request, signed Abdenbi El Boujadi, national general coordinator of the transport sector at the ODTL, whose MoroccoLatestNews UK holds a copy and of which the customs administration has acknowledged receipt, calls on the head of the ADII to look into this problem.
They also specified that professionals in the sector have responsibilities vis-Ã -vis their employees as well as charges to banks that they can no longer pay, noting that they pay all the fees imposed by the state for the sector.
Contacted by MoroccoLatestNews UK on this subject, a responsible source within the Administration of Customs and Indirect Taxes told us that there is indeed a problem at this level, and that ” the procedure for granting this authorization to professionals is currently being reviewed by the competent services”.
“Once finalized and validated by the higher authorities, the authorizations will be delivered“, she added, specifying nevertheless that”no deadline has been set at this time and that the competent services are working to resolve this problem”.
So to be continued…