Выступление в таможне

Dear Commissioner Mr. Yoon Young Sun,

Esteemed Ambassadors,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I highly appreciate your kind invitation to take part in celebrating the 29-th International Customs Day.

Allow me please to extend my sincere congratulations on this Day to all the officials of the Korea Customs Service which in 1981 proposed to mark the anniversary in order to recognize the importance of customs administration and strengthen the cooperation with 177 member countries of the World Customs Organization.

Your job is of great importance on all respects. When a foreigner, including diplomats, enters the country, first officials he meets are immigration and customs officers, so your performance creats the first impression on the country.

Your job contributes greatly to the successful development of trade and finance and directly affects the situation in the national economy. I would like to stress that from all these points of view the Korea Customs during recent years demonstrated great achivements and became one of the most successful services in the world.

We highly appreciate Korea Customs contribution to the bilateral trade and economic cooperation between the Republic of Korea and other countries, including Russia, which despite the global financial crisis last year demonstrated dynamic development.

Within the framework of WCO and on the bilateral basis the Korea Customs Service promoted cooperation in such important spheres like preventing illegal drug trafficking, exchange of information on money laundering.

We are quite satisfied with the fruitful relations between customs servises of Russia and Korea, which have entered a new phase, and are ready in the coming months to make major steps towards practical implementation of the concept of “green corridor”, which would provide an opportunity for significant reductions in customs procedures for the law-obiding companies of our two countries, and we are ready to establish the exchange of objective date on the evaluation of goods.

Therefore we consider as very relevant and timely the decision of WCO to set the theme of the 2011 International Customs Day as “Knowledge, a catalyst for Customs excellence”. The aims we have marked for this year will directly implement this slogan.

Dear Commissioner, let me wish you and your collegues full success in your hard but very important work.

Thank you for your attention.