The World Customs Organisation (WCO) hosted its 4th Global Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) Conference - ‘Promoting Mutual Recognition of AEOs to Strengthen and Secure Global Trade’ from 16-18 March in Kampala, Uganda. The conference brought together more than 1 100 participants from 95 countries. You may recall the South African Revenue Service (Sars) AEO equivalent, the Customs Preferred Trade Programme, which I will return to.
Discussions included how AEO programmes and Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) could provide a secure business environment for economic development, enhance compliance level and increase revenue collection and trade facilitation, and obtain more benefits with coordinated border management including MRA at both the bilateral and plurilateral level. The need was expressed to standardise and harmonise the international AEO programmes and to explore the different ways of harnessing technological solutions.