2005 Press Releases

The United States is to make a donation of new technical equipment to the Ministry of Economy and the Customs Administration of the Slovak Republic

Bratislava, May 11, 2005

This week, the US State Department will make a donation to the Slovak Ministry of Economy of technical equipment designed to speed up and upgrade the Tracker system, worth approx $19,000 (SKK 570,000). The new Tracker version brings several improvements, including in the designation of individual categories and the data entry algorithm, allowing a better orientation, speeding up the procedure and, ultimately, enabling time savings. The system makes it possible to effectively download various scanned documents and commentaries, thus creating a complete database on individual cases. The importance of these summary overviews has increased especially after the accession of Slovakia to the European Union, which entailed the need for statistical information that meets well-defined criteria.

In April 2002, the Ministry of Economy received a Tracker system from the US State Department worth $52,000. The Tracker system was deployed at the Ministry's department of Sensitive Goods Trading Management. The system has been used in the process of generating licenses for trade in civilian firearms, ammunition and explosives, and for trade in dual-use goods. In the future, the Ministry of Economy plans to use the Tracker system also in the area of trade in military material. The data from applications are keyed in, using a well-defined key, with a view to generating individual categories of information concerning the type of license, applicants, goods, and trade partners. Information kept in the form of databases may be re-used in the licensing process, thus greatly facilitating and accelerating the procedure.

Another institution to receive a donation from the United States of America is the Customs Administration of the Slovak Republic, which will get six fibroscopes for detecting hidden illegal goods and objects. Fibroscopes worth approximately $42,000 (SKK 1,260,000) were purchased under the Export Control and Related Border Security Program funded by the US State Department.

The newly developed concept of performing customs surveillance in the territory of Slovakia lays emphasis on performing mobile customs surveillance in the Slovak-Ukrainian border zone. The development of this new concept has been necessitated by a large quantity of illegal imports flowing through that border. Besides human resources, the new concept calls for technical support that matches the extent of this problem and the need for its solution. Important components of the required technical equipment are fibroscopes, which are to be used both at border crossings when performing border checks, especially those of passenger motor vehicles and railway cars, and in the mobile customs surveillance performed by mobile teams in the Slovak-Ukrainian border zone.