On July 1, 2024, the Customs Service made the first transit operations at the national level in the New Computerized Transit System (NCTS)
Transition of economic operators to the NCTS system will be made in a phased process (over 3 months) so that the economic operators are enabled, during the transitional period, to train their staff and to comply with the requirements of the New Customs Code.
The New Computerized Transit System will handle the following customs transit operations:
- transit operations at national level under Customs Code 95/2021 and the Regulation on the application of the Customs Code approved by the Regulation on the application of Customs Code no. 92/2023
- common transit operations after accession of the Republic of Moldova to the Convention on a common transit procedure, concluded in Interlaken, 1987.
The main benefits of NCTS include as follows:
for economic operators:
- direct electronic data exchange with customs authorities
- expedited customs procedures
- less administrative workload
- early discharge of transit procedure and release of guarantee by the customs office of departure
- more information available (for example, on the transaction status)
- reduced costs of transit formalities
for the Customs Service:
- "real-time" data exchange between customs administrations
- Elimination of fraudulent document manipulation
- less investigative actions
- selective controls based on risk analysis
- better planning and use of human resources
- better quality of transit statistics.
Following the accession of the Republic of Moldova to the Common Transit Convention, NCTS5-MD will allow integration with European and international customs networks, which will facilitate safer and more efficient international trade and will reduce the waiting times at customs offices.
NCTS (New Computerized Transit System) is a European management and control system, based on electronic submission of transit declarations and electronic exchange of data between the customs authorities involved in a transit procedure: office of departure, transit office and office of destination. The benefits of NCTS include better quality of services provided to economic operators, enhanced data security, electronic confirmation of the transit operation, reduced costs and delays caused by hard-copy declaration of goods, as well as lower risk of fraud and corruption due to the on-line monitoring of transit operations.
NCTS is currently used internationally in 27 EU Member States, 4 Member States of the European Free Trade Association – EFTA (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein), Turkey, Serbia, Northern Macedonia, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Ukraine. The legal basis of NCTS if the Convention on a common transit procedure and the Convention on the simplification of formalities in trade in goods, concluded at Interlaken on 20 May 1987.
These conventions provide for the possibility of accession by third countries, provided that they are invited to do so by the depositary (Secretary General of the EU Council), following the decision of the EU-EFTA Joint Committee responsible for the administration and implementation of the Conventions representing all contracting parties (since June 2009, the Republic of Moldova has been an observer in the Joint Committee and in the working groups in the NCTS).
The NCTS implementation project was launched on September 26, 2023, and was developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development with the financial support of the European Union. The actual implementation of the project is set up to begin in 2025.
