“The Commercial Customs is open. If right now you want to pass a truck with merchandise within the tariff codes that have been started right now, you can pass. In fact, several trucks have been passing over the past few weeks.”
Government Delegate Sabrina Moh, in an interview with Onda Cero, referred to the reopening of commercial customs, a “clamour” on the part of the city’s business sector. “Now we have opened the commercial customs, properly said, with a customs code of our own at the border,” he announced, something that has been given for the first time in history, given that until 2018 it was done in the Port of Beni-Enza.
Moh has made it clear that the ultimate goal is the full normalization of the transit of goods through the border post of Beni-Enza. “Our responsibility was to open up space for this opening of the commercial customs, and for this there has been a complicated work, a difficult work so that everything is fixed and we can have a commercial customs with all the guarantees,” he said.
In this sense, he has stressed that it is going to be done progressively, “depending on the demand that exists”. “The tariff codes of all the goods that are going to be passed are going to be expanded, we have started with a series of products that will be expanded,” he explained.
The highest representative of the Government of Spain in our city has stressed that “commercial customs is a reality”. Thus, he has referred to the commercial export expeditions that have taken place in the past weeks, “from the moment in which the first export occurred, entrepreneurs who require it can make use of this commercial customs.” “Now the business sector is free to use it,” he said.
At this point, the Delegate has valued positively the import of fish that occurred last week. “I think the important news the other day was that a fish truck enters Melilla after five years and, for the first time in history, a refrigerated truck,” he said. “We will be able to improve and bring more kilos, but it is a news to celebrate,” he said.
Customs recognized
The head of the delegation made it clear that “we are not going back to 2018” in terms of commercial customs. In this regard, he has assured not to understand “this commitment of magic recipes returning to the past”. “The economy is evolving, society is evolving, everything is evolving and there is a sector that always asks to go back to the past,” he said. “No vamos a volver al contrabando, no vamos a volver al comercio atípico”, ha defendido.
“When we talk about going back to 2018, we talk about going back to a recipe that is not the one that we are materializing now. Now there is exhaustive control, now there are tariff codes, now there is a procedure,” he explained.
In fact, he has stated, in relation to imports, that “to return to 2018 would be to return to vans instead of refrigerated trucks, it would be to return to sanitary conditions that are different from those of right now.” “Right now we have a series of health certificates to look after the fish. That, of course, it is of quality, that it passes all the controls and that it can also be more economical if possible,” he stressed.
Health Checkpoint
Asked by the Sanitary Control Post, Sabrina Moh clarified that the Government Delegation is not the one that grants the license for the operation of the Sanitary Control Post (PCS), but it is the Port Authority. “It is false that the Government Delegation has granted absolutely nothing,” he said.
Moh has explained that, once the license has been granted by the Port Authority and after presenting to the Ministry of Agriculture the relevant documentation for the granting of the sanitary license, it has been certified that this facility meets the sanitary requirements for the control of products of animal origin, which is what the ministerial body has granted.
In any case, he stressed that “the important thing is that Melilla now has a facility that meets the sanitary conditions to be able to inspect the fish”.
At this point, Moh has shown his surprise at the statements made on this issue. “Melilla must be the only point in Spain where there are people who are interested in doing activity inside the port and its President says to take it outside.” Thus, he has described the speech of the President of the Port Authority as “incongruous”.
“All port presidents fight to revitalize their ports, because there is more activity inside the port, and, precisely in Melilla, when they request facilities to exploit them inside the port, they say they take them out, that we do not want income,” he said.
In this way, the Delegate of the Government has described as “sterile and poor” the debate that is arising in relation to the PCS. “All this in the end serves to make the citizenry absolutely bored,” he lamented.