On November 27, 2017, the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of the RK "Atameken" jointly with the Committee of State Revenues of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan announced the launch of a pilot project for the labeling of natural fur products on the territory of Kazakhstan and presented the "Marking of goods" information system.

Even before the launch of the "pilot" marking project, the Chamber conducted a lot of explanatory work with entrepreneurs, various seminars were organized jointly with the SRC MF RK, with the system developer and with the "GS1 Kazakhstan" Association.

Explanatory work continued after the marking was launched. Atameken held consultations and clarifications on the algorithm of entrepreneurs' actions, both in working with the information system and on interacting with the process' participants. The regional chambers directly helped to enter data into the "Marking of goods" IS and conducted training seminars for entrepreneurs on site together with representatives of the SRC.

"In general, the pilot project of marking products from natural fur, aimed at ensuring equal competition and protection of the Kazakhstani buyer against counterfeit products, has positive results. To date, more than 235 thousand items from the natural fur have been marked, revenues to the budget have increased, and the share of illegal products has decreased," - Nurlybek Isabekov, an expert of the department of economic integration of the "Atameken ", explained.

Thus, according to the information provided by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan, during the period of introduction of marking from 27 November 2017 to 30 June 2018, compared to the same period, the revenues of customs payments and taxes increased by KZT 78.2 million (from KZT 28.7 million to 106,7 million tenge) or more than three and a half times.

However, along with positive results, the moments remain that hamper the implementation of the labeling project.

One of the main constraints is frequent failures of the "Marking of goods" IS itself. Entrepreneurs are forced to make data several times not only into the information system, but also into the "GS1 Kazakhstan" system.

"Along with this, integration with the information system of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan "Tais-2", which carries out the transfer of information on customs declarations, was implemented only in mid-January 2018, and in April the transition to the "Astana-1" information system which still raises many questions and remains unsolved to this day," - Nurlybek Isabekov, an expert at the Department of Economic Integration of the "Atameken", noted.​​​​​​​

In particular, when importing goods from third countries, one of the main problems is the absence of a customs declaration in the Information System, due to incorrect data transfer in the process of integration with the "Astana-1" customs system. In cases where a customs declaration exists, the "Marking of goods" service software product reveals additional technical problems related to the lack of necessary fields for filling.

Such slowness in the work of the authorized bodies has great negative consequences for the indicators of the implementation of the marking project in the territory of Kazakhstan.

According to the Agreement on the marking of goods within the framework of the EAEU, there is no need to re-label the products made from natural fur, labeled and imported from a member state of the Union. In this regard, domestic entrepreneurs only need to accept goods imported from the EAEU on the balance according to the requirements of the Information System. However, due to technical problems in the information systems of the EAEU partner countries, intermittent failures occur, and domestic entrepreneurs can not accept imported products for weeks

"The abovementioned technical problems associated with the functioning of the "Marking of goods" IS lead to an increase in the financial and time costs of domestic entrepreneurs, because of the inability to accept transfer of goods, domestic business can not sell this product, which negatively affects its activities," - Nurlybek Isabekov notes.​​​​​​​

Along with this, the entrepreneur is forced to violate the Rules for the implementation of the pilot project, since he can not, timely, place an order or to accept the goods imported from the EAEU member states due to failures in the work of the "Marking of goods" IS.

"The summer season is close to the completion and the season of import of natural fur products is just around the corner, while the technical problems of the Information System that have not been resolved yet, can lead to a stoppage of trade and rise in price of fur products in the coming weeks," - the speaker predicts.​​​​​​​

Authorized bodies must resolve the existing problems as soon as possible in order to eliminate the above-mentioned risks associated with the incorrect functioning of systems.

At the same time, the Chamber believes that in the case of incorrect work of the Information System, it is necessary to exclude the imposition of administrative responsibility on bona fide entrepreneurs. And also the authorized bodies are obliged to inform the business about the system failures in a timely manner.