Chinese goods enter BiH under Turkish flag, country loses millions in taxes

Companies from Turkey import tons of Chinese goods into Bosnia and Herzegovina annually, on which they do not pay taxes, thus defrauding our country's budget of tens of millions of marks every year, claim exporters according to the news agency Patria (NAP).

Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey have had a free trade agreement since 2003, and since 2007, customs duties on goods traded between the two countries have been abolished.

However, since only goods that are largely produced in Turkey have privileges, some Turkish traders commit fraud in their own country, where they repackage Chinese goods or goods of other origin and then market them as Turkish products in the BiH market.

Banja Luka's "Novi reporter" published an article in 2007 revealing the illegal import of oil into BiH, which defrauded the state of about 25 million KM, and high-ranking officials of the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH, as well as large oil companies such as OMV and Petrol, were involved in the affair.

Oil brokers have been importing fuel into BiH for years with forged documents, this newspaper has confirmed. Precisely, sources confirmed, the free trade agreement that Turkey has with BiH is being abused, so fuel is imported under the Turkish flag from other countries as well, thus avoiding the payment of BiH taxes.

However, even in this case, the blame does not lie solely with one party. Turkey itself has problems due to free trade with BiH, although this affects its rapidly growing giant economy much less than the fragile BiH economy.

Namely, a few BiH companies engaged in import and export marketed nearly 3,000 tons of walnuts to Turkey a few years ago. The walnuts were marketed as BiH products, although they were walnuts from Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania, thus avoiding the payment of taxes to Turkey in the amount of 14 million marks, writes Patria.

In the same way, a fraud was committed with BIRA refrigerators, when Chinese goods were repackaged in BiH and marketed internationally as goods produced in BiH, writes NAP.