8th edition of the WCO Knowledge Academy
The World Customs Organisation (WCO) Knowledge Academy’s oneweek intensive training course, facilitated by 40 prominent speakers and facilitators, took place at its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium during the week of 02 July. The training included a one-day field trip to the port of Rotterdam which provided an opportunity for participants to visit Europe’s largest bunkering and sea port as well as the Customs Museum. The port of Rotterdam owes its position to its outstanding accessibility for sea-going vessels and its intermodal connections, with 180 000 people working in the port and the adjacent industrial area. The training programme focused on all aspects of Customs work relating to e-commerce; the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA); the SAFE Framework of Standards to secure and facilitate global trade; Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW); Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR); drug trafficking; Post-Clearance Audit (PCA); Trends and patterns in the illicit trade of excisable goods; Money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing; Capacity building; Insecurity and cross-border trade: Potential uses of modelling for Customs intelligence; the Harmonized System (HS) for the classification of goods; Rules of Origin (RoO); and customs valuation.
70th WCO Istanbul Convention Contracting Party
On 03 July the Republic of Armenia became the 70th contracting party to the WCO’s Istanbul Convention, which will enter into force on 03 October. The Istanbul Convention is an international instrument that combines all existing conventions on temporary admission. The ATA Carnet (Admission Temporaire/ Temporary Admission), which is an integral part of the Istanbul Convention, allows the free movement of goods across frontiers and their temporary admission into a Customs territory with relief from duties and taxes. These goods are covered by a single document known as the ATA Carnet that is secured by an international guarantee system. With this system the international business community enjoys considerable simplification of Customs formalities as the ATA Carnet also serves as a goods declaration at export, transit and import. The ATA Carnet is now the document most widely used by the trade for international operations involving the temporary admission of goods.
WCO Secretary General re-elected
The WCO has announced that its secretary general, Kunio Mikuriya, has been re-elected for a five-year term with effect from 01 January 2019. Before taking up his position as WCO secretary general in 2009, Mikuriya spent seven years as the WCO deputy secretary general, leading efforts to coordinate the secretariat’s work in partnership with other international organisations such as the WTO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as with the private sector. Prior to joining the WCO, Mikuriya spent 25 years in Japan’s ministry of finance, occupying a variety of senior posts. Mikuriya holds a Bachelor of Arts in Law from the University of Tokyo (Japan) and a PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom.
