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A Russian/American initiative to speed up the Far East’s customs process gave participants a sign of hope mid January, when two shipments cleared Russian customs four times faster than under the current system.

Clear-Pac starts an importer’s customs declaration through the Russian system via electronic mail before the goods have actually arrived in Russia. Importers send their documents to a Seattle office before shipping, which then sends the documents via e-mail to Vladivostok, where Clear-Pac employees begin clearing the shipment.

So far, part

icipants say results are encouraging. “I think there’s real potential for Clear-Pac,” said Andrew Wilson, general director of freight company Links Ltd. “For most of our customers the speed of customs clearance is much more important than the cost of customs duties.”

Under present customs law, importers must get documents cleared by a series of customs offices in a set order, a process which creates problems particularly for importers of perishable goods. With the high volume of American food imports to the Far East, the new system could bring considerable benefits, said Jane Miller Floyd, American consul to Vladivostok.

She estimates, for example, that more than 50 percent of food products in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky are imported from the United States and that complicated customs procedures are “one of the main barriers to rapid expansion of trade and investment in the Russian Far East.”

But Clear-Pac alleviates this bottleneck, because less interested entities clear particular goods more quickly. Miller Floyd said, for example, that the agriculture department won’t need to inspect “an unworking ice cream freezer,” allowing the environmental office more time to inspect it for freon leaks.

The Clear-Pac experiment is the result of two years of talks held by a commission appointed by Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin Commission and Vice President Gore to help Russian customs handle increased trade activity after the fall of communism. Both sides also feared that the laborious Russian system was driving away trade between the two countries.

To start the project, the Clear-Pac program received $200,000 from the American government and $100,000 from the Russian private sector. Program developers designated Seattle and Vladivostok ports as hosts for the experiment because of their heavy trade with each other and Vladivostok’s link to the trans-Siberian railway.

Despite initial optimism around Clear-Pac, officials say not enough time has passed, or enough shipments received, to make a proper assessment of the program. “Our goal right now is simply to create a wide base for analysis,” said Evgeny Verkhozin, who runs Clear-Pak’s Vladivostok office.

In March officials from both sides will report their results. The experiment may then be implemented in other parts of the Far East. Customs officials in Nakhodka and Vostochny, Verkhozin said, have already expressed interest in adopting a similar program.