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MORINE, Yugoslavia, Sept. 20 (UPI) Things were a little too quiet at the border Albania-Kosovo border on Monday, the first day the United Nations started charging customs duties.
A line of tractor-trailer trucks usually stretches at least half a mile (1 km) on the Albanian side at Morine, the busiest border post. But on Monday, only 12 trucks had come through by late afternoon six empty, two filled with humanitarian aid and only four loaded with taxable goods.
"We're not ready to pay," said Ferhid Feruku, 34, driver of a small delivery truck usually used for packaged juice and fresh fruit. "The United Nations already has enough money. We are Albanians, they are Albanians, why should we have to pay?"
Under the new U.N. rule, drivers pay a duty of about 25 percent of the wholesale price of their listed cargo. Those with alcohol, cigarettes and big-ticket items, such as TVs and satellites, are taxed more, said Ylber Rraci, chief customs officer of the 12 Kosovo Albanian hired as staff.
Rraci said commercial traffic seemed light. He said U.N. estimates of how much revenue the border can generate may be too high.
Revenues are expected to reach 50,000 German marks per day (around $26,500), an amount that will go into an administrative budget to pay salaries and pensions to workers and retirees in Kosovo, said Scott Brown, a U.N. administrator working on the customs project. Only 4,000 marks (around $2,100) was collected today.
The United Nations plans to earn about 9 million marks (a little less than $4.8 million) per month in revenues from traffic across this border and Kosovo's border with Macedonia. The first installment will be used to pay modest salaries to teachers, health care workers and police this month, Brown said.
Direct foreign assistance donations in a U.N. trust fund have been tapped to pay these salaries so far, an estimated 8 million marks ($4.2 million).
"What's gratifying is that the revenue stream is immediate," Brown said.
International monitors watch the customs officers' activities. and workers will probably be rotated to other jobs on a regular basis as a good financial order measure, Brown said.
The driver of an unmarked truck carrying Coca-Cola and other soft drinks from a plant in Albania said he didn't mind paying customs duties, since his boss picks up the tab.
"I'll tell my boss, and he'll give me the money and receipt forms next time," said Fadil Dida, 32, a truck driver from Durres, Albania.