Just a reminder that South Africa is yet to ratify the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). It is still not known whether South Africa will be one of the two thirds of the WTO’s members that will ratify the FTA for it to enter into force.
The World Customs Organisation (WCO) East and Southern Africa (ESA) region held a second regional workshop on the WTO TFA from 20 to 23 September in Gaborone, Botswana. The Workshop was coordinated by the WCO and ESA Regional Office for Capacity Building (ROCB) through the kind sponsorship of UK DFID and hosted by the Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS).
This workshop focused above all on discussions related to the practical implementation of the TFA measures under Articles 1 to 12 of the WTO TFA, and the WCO instruments and tools available to support governments with uniform implementation of the TFA. The importance of establishing National Committees on Trade Facilitation (NCTF) and the critical role that this committee plays as an obligatory national body was discussed. The experiences shared by members on the implementation of the TFA enhanced the cross-fertilisation of ideas on the challenges as well as on successful policy measures that could be adopted by WCO member administrations to support national TFA implementation programmes.