Global Hand’s customs guide for humanitarian aid, listing over 130 countries, with the balance under research.

Many of you have expressed your ongoing need for customs information. As you probably know, we have been building a guide to customs regulations specific to humanitarian aid. You may have heard of this guide at one of the Global Hand conferences, or seen it on our website, or in previous news articles.

Where Are We Up To?

We are continuing to build our information resource as governments from the 192 countries, around the world, feed back to us.

We now have information on over 150 countries. For about 75 of these we have a complete profile of customs regulations. For the remaining 75 we offer links to portals with other customs-related resources.

How Do You Use The Guide?

Search for Customs and pick a country from the list. You will be able to view information on topics such as:

• Documents required for importing aid,
• Procedures for obtaining tax exemption, and
• Lists of prohibited goods.

Keeping this information current is all important.

If you have any information that may help, please let us know. For example, do you have:

• Any customs laws/regulations that could be faxed to us?
• Experience on importing goods to a particular country, that you would like to share with the GH community?
• Sources of information whom we could contact?
• Stories from your own experience?

Over the coming months we will be highlighting countries in these news articles and asking whether you have any experience or suggested resources for them.

Rules Change In Romania!

An update came in recently from HTG Vidotrans, based in Holland. They are a humanitarian transport organisation specialising in transporting relief goods worldwide, with an associated humanitarian foundation in Oradea, Romania.

New Import Rules For Medicine And Medical Equipment In Romania

A new law has recently been put in place in Romania concerning the import of medicine and medical equipment. In addition to the normal Catre Vama, a special import license is now required. To apply for this license the consignee must present the technical manuals of the imported equipment to the relevant Customs office.

A further change in the law requires that the original consignee will be held responsible for the misuse of the medicine or equipment by the final recipient. The organisation that forwarded this information to us, HTG Vidotrans, has therefore decided not to import medicine or medical equipment in Romania. They advise that medicine and medical equipment should only be imported directly by a hospital, dispensary or doctor. Date:Global Hand received this information on 22nd October 2003. Source:The HTG Vidotrans office in Romania was provided with this information by the Romanian Customs office in Bihor county, Romania.

You can view these resources and more in Customs.

Do you have information to add? Please email us at: enquiries@globalhand.org