Boosting Customs Capacity With WCO Single Window: Following its commitment to contributing positively towards the betterment of member countries by boosting the capacity of customs administrations, a workshop under the third component (Coordinated Border Management) was organised by the World Customs Organisation (WCO) recently. The workshop organised for the WCO East and Southern Africa region (ESA) with the theme “Building Trade Capacity through Customs Modernisation in the East and Southern Africa Region,” was held between March 26 and 28, 2014, in Kigali, Rwanda. The well attended workshop was in response to the need of government officials regarding the single window and data model matters in the ESA region. Rwanda was chosen to host the workshop as it is one of the few countries in Africa with an operational single window system and only the second in the region to have implemented it. Participants at the workshop included officers from diverse backgrounds and consisted of officials from customs as well as immigration officials, Ministry of Trade officials, private sector development and reform programme representatives, standards and an official from agriculture and livestock from 11 countries. According to a statement on the WCO website, the workshop is aimed to further strengthen the on-going implementation of the organisation’s capacity building strategy, especially in the ESA region. Declaring the workshop open, the project manager in charge of the Rwandan single window programme, Mr Christian Nizeyimana, shared Rwanda’s experience in the journey towards the single window implementation and risk management. He noted the country’s initial frustrations before an idea to implement the single window system was hatched in 2005. He explained that despite the many hurdles the country faced, and which are continually faced by many governments in Africa, the idea of implementing the single window system in Rwanda turned to fruition in 2012. Meanwhile, the implementation of the Single Window system in Nigeria, a process led by single window expert, Valentina Mintah, is already at an advanced stage. The single window concept is now the modern way of doing all import and export business world over, a concept that has been endorsed by both by the United Nations and the WCO. The system is described by the WCO as a cross border intelligent facility that allows parties involved in trade and transport to lodge standardised information with a single point to fulfil all import, export and transit-related regulatory requirement. While commending the WCO and Finnish government for their support in organising the workshop, Nizeyimana lauded the WCO for the help extended through the implementation period as well as the tools and instruments availed members. He specifically singled out the WCO Data Model for its important role in harmonisation of documents and procedures. Giving a run-down of the workshop, the project manager Ms Riitta Passi, gave details of the components of the project and how it will contribute to the modernisation efforts of the customs administrations in the region. The three-day workshop was topically divided with Coordinated Border Management on Day one; Single Window and Data Model on Day two and three. Participants received hands on training on the WCO data model at the workshop even as the programme was interspersed with coordinated border management experiences from Rwanda, Mauritius and Finland. In his remarks, the commissioner-general of the Rwanda Revenue Authority, Mr Richard Tusabe, gave a special insight into the implementation of the single window systems in Africa, and emphasised the importance of the private sector buy-in and involvement of other stakeholders. Tusabe stressed that the customs alone cannot make the single window system a success without the private sector. He underscored the need for extensive communication between customs administrations and all private and public sector stakeholders. Similarly, a WCO national seminar on the Harmonised System was held in the Headquarters of the Asociación de Despachantes de Aduana de Uruguay (ADAU) in Montevideo, Uruguay, between March 19 and 21, 2014. The seminar which was a joint initiative of the WCO, the Uruguay Customs and ADAU was attended by 120 participants from both Uruguay Customs and the ADAU. The forum highlighted the ongoing support of the WCO to meet the demands of Uruguay in its capacity building initiatives while thanking the representative from the WCO Secretariat’s Directorate of Tariff and Trade Affairs for facilitating the high level discussions on tariff classification issues. During the seminar, the group discussed the use and future prospects of the Harmonised System (HS) and some practical cases of tariff classification in relevant areas. The importance of the HS as the most widely used instrument of the WCO responsible for the correct and uniform classification of goods – a key issue for customs administrations and other relevant international trade stakeholders from both the public and private sectors, was stressed. The president of theADAU, Pedro Castro, who thanked the WCO for its continuous support, stressed the relevance of the seminar and its contribution to the effectiveness of the work carried out by the ADAU.Meanwhile, the WCO, during the 9th global meeting of the Heads of Regional Offices for Capacity Building (ROCBs), the Regional Training Centres (RTCs) and Vice Chairs’ offices, has reaffirmed its commitment on capacity building to regional structures to support members. About 60 representatives from the ROCBs, RTCs and the Vice Chairs’ offices met on March 27 and 28, 2014, in Brussels for the meeting to discuss how the regional structures can effectively co-operate with the WCO to deliver support to members. A key focus of this year’s meeting was to reaffirm the commitment of the ROCBs and RTCs to capacity building delivery as well as their roles in fulfilling their responsibilities in the areas of the WCO annual capacity building needs assessment, donor engagement and identification and maintenance of expertise in the region. The comptroller-general of the Nigeria Customs Service, Abdullahi Dikko, is currently the Vice Chair of the WCO West and Central African region. In order to form a sound basis of discussion, the WCO secretariat provided food for thought concerning a to-be-developed WCO training diagnostic tool to, among others, support the RTCs in assisting national training centres in their region, and concerning the WCO experts’ situation. Furthermore, an invitation to contribute to the development of activities related to further the WCO instruments and tools such as the People Development Interactive Map on CLiCK!, the Virtual Customs Orientation Academy and a regional training evaluation mechanism was extended to the ROCBs, RTCs and Vice Chairs’ Offices, which was cordially accepted. An analysis done on good practices and challenges of the ROCBs and RTCs based on a survey conducted in 2013, was welcomed by the meeting as a tool to enable regional entities to mutually benefit from each other’s practices with a view to enhancing the role of respective entities. The meeting also paid attention to the latest development of the WCO tools and initiatives from all WCO directorates and units that have influence on capacity building delivery by regional structures. Original link Read More goo.gl/xdia9i (y) ✍comment ☏share
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 03:28:15 +0000
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