Supermarket sweep: Belarusians buy goods in Poland

Belarusians bring electronic devices, household chemicals and food from Poland to Belarus.

Belarusians received $70 million of VAT refund through the tax free system only in the Podlaskie Voivodeship for a period from January to April 2014. According to the customs service in Bialystok, 300,000 tourists, most of them Belarusians, carried goods at a sum of around 1 billion zloty (335 million dollars according to the current exchange rate) through border crossing points in the Podlaskie Voivodeship in 2013. It is almost 200 million zloty more than in 2012.

“Customs officers registered over 230,000 tax free forms at a sum of 200 million zloty ($70 million) at border checkpoints in Kuznica and Bobrowniki in the first quarter of 2014,” says Maciej Czarnecki, a spokesman for the Customs Service in Bialystok.

About 65,000 tourists used the tax free system to buy goods, mainly electronic devices, household chemicals and food.

Customs officers turn attention to the growing interest in the electronic tax free application. Customs officers in Bobrowniki and Kuznica receive every second application for registering the tax free documents via the Internet. It takes less time to check the documents and cross the border.

It's worth noting that goods at a sum of 617 million zloty (about 200 million dollars) were brought out of Poland in five month of 2014 through border crossing points in the Lublin Voivodeship, which borders on Belarus and Ukraine. The Customs Service doesn't inform what percentage of the sum belongs to the Belarusians. The statistics doesn't count the goods in the tax free system brought out of Poland by plane and the goods brought out without registering in the system.