The Japan P&I Club has obtained additional information of the customs fine in Nikolaev port from their correspondents in Ukraine. Huge fines are imposed by the Customs officers in Nikolaev for failure to declare the ship’s stores and any goods on board.
It is inevitable to lead to particularly high fines for alleged discrepancies between actual quantity of bunker oil on board and declared quantity, which are found out as a result of their sounding of the ship’s bunker tanks.
The Club has received the following information from Dias Marine Consulting P.C., correspondents :
” We have repeatedly reported to our Principals and their Members on outrageous Customs’ “activities” in Nikolaev port. In particular we mean their practice of imposing huge fines on foreign-flagged ships for failure to declare the ship’s stores and any goods on board.
Unfortunately, this practice is not only still going on but it’s getting more frequent of late two months. We have to remind all the parties concerned that before entering at this port almost everything on board shall be inserted in the Customs’ declaration: medicines (drugs), cash both that of the ship and the crew members’ personal savings, barrels/tins of paint or oil, as well as any other stores and various commodities on board.
Besides, the Nikolaev Custom’ officers do the sounding of the ship’s bunker tanks, i.e. actually perform a bunker survey of fuel and diesel oil and if they found any discrepancy between their findings and figures declared by the Chief Engineer the fine is inevitable. The sum of the fine is rather big – it is calculated as double cost of undeclared good. Inaccurately declared bunker leads to particularly high fines.
Our statistics shows that every week on average one ship is getting fined by the Customs and we would like to urge the ships’ Masters to adhere closely to the ship’s agents’ recommendations / instructions and to declare almost everything on board the ships to comply with strict requirements of the Ukrainian Customs. As a rule ship’s agents provide Master/Owners with Custom’s requirements in their pre-arrival notices but we presume that many cases Members do not take adequate care and attention to such notices.”
The Club advises operators whose vessels are scheduled to call at Nikolaev port to take utmost care by following the requirements of Ukrainian Customs in accordance with the local agents’ advice in order to prevent outrageons customs fines.
Source: The Japan P&I Club
