Customs administrators develop guidelines for WCO security regime
The World Customs Organization’s 24-member Policy Commission will meet next week in Brussels, Belgium, to continue developing a plan to implement the international body’s new framework for global supply chain security and customs efficiency standards.
So far 120 nations have formally committed to implement the broad principles for a common global approach to customs management and cooperation adopted by the WCO last summer.
The High Level Strategic Group, which comprises the dozen customs chiefs leading the WCO standards-setting process, is scheduled to meet in April to recommend to the WCO more detailed guidelines on how customs administrations should implement the framework. The WCO will vote on the implementing guidelines during the organizations annual meeting in June.
Top customs officials and private sector representatives next week will hold discussions in Brussels on ways for countries to start trusted shipper programs, according to Keith Thomson, assistant commissioner for international affairs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Under the WCO plan, customs administrations would start partnership programs with industry similar to the U.S. Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism or Sweden’s StairSec. In exchange for following certain security criteria, importers and exporters would be granted fewer inspections and other benefits.
Thomson encouraged U.S. importers to become spokespersons for customs-to-business partnerships. American companies need to share their positive experience with C-TPAT with foreign customs administrations and private industry, so that other countries are motivated and educated on how to build what the WCO calls its authorized economic operator model.
“We are so far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of private sector engagement that we have to share that experience,” Thomson told the Commercial Operations Advisory Committee.
As the European Union develops its trusted shipper program, CBP and EU officials are discussing how they will recognize each other’s program’s so that companies certified as meeting corporate security standards in one country will receive the benefit of faster customs clearance in other countries. Thomson said the mutual recognition system devised by the United States and the EU “could serve as the template” for the rest of the world.
Thomson and Deborah Spero, CBP’s acting commissioner, will also hold follow-up meetings with customs officials from countries such as Japan, New Zealand and the European Union, that have pledged to provide assistance to help less modern customs administration develop the programs and infrastructure they need to keep their large trading partners happy.
CBP hosted a meeting in Miami in October during which donor countries were paired with developing countries that are committed to implementing the framework of standards.
“The system will not work unless these customs administrations have the ability to participate in the type of system we have in the United States,” Thomson said. That means governments need information technology to automate the cargo inspection process, large X-ray and radiation detection machines, a professional workforce and security programs that incentivize private sector security efforts.
Many countries still need to be educated because they do not understand that the framework is based on risk management techniques that allow inspectors to be smarter about which boxes they check, said Sandra Fallgatter, a customs compliance manager for J.C. Penney. She reported that Honduras, which isn’t a WCO member, issued a directive last summer to align itself with the WCO process that 100 percent of outbound containers be inspected by X-ray. The directive has since been postponed, she said.