Page 25 - Hafen Hamburg | Port of Hamburg Magazine 4.2021
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Surmounting Bureaucratic Hurdles
International trade conflicts, embargoes, punitive rates of duty – the challenges in world trade mainly have political origins. Wherever trade barriers are hard to fathom for companies, Porath Customs Agents spring into action.
Any fish on a dinner plate in Germany after being caught in Norway will frequently have a long journey behind it. Before reaching Germany, it goes to Turkey to be gutted and filleted. Nor is that the end of the journey. The processed fish only hits supermarket shelves once its documentation is available, and in valid form. “When an appropriate document is not available, or has been incorrectly filled in, then it has to be corrected, in Turkey and in the original,” ex- plains Melanie Al Marji of Porath Customs Agents, adding: “Meanwhile, the fish must wait here in Ger- many in a reefer container or a truck, and may not be processed until it has successfully passed through all the checks.”
Such problems have been no rarity just recently. One reason for that is that at global level, the free market increasingly lacks political backing. Although abolition of Customs duties has been feasible over the past thirty years, in recent years the administrative burden for trading companies has grown. Non-tariff trade bar- riers take up more and more time for companies. Complicated bureaucracy, new IT systems and con- stantly new/altered regulations hamper international trade. For many firms, the heavy administrative load outweighs lower costs. This trend is especially appar- ent where regulation is very strictly controlled, i.e., in the food sector.
COMPLEXITY CALLS FOR SPECIALIZATION
As a rule, it is not the companies themselves that overcome these hurdles. They call up support from specialized teams in Customs agencies. Porath Cus-
WORLD TRADE ■
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