Six Central American countries will jointly implement the Study on the Measurement of Land Transit Times for Goods, the Secretariat for Central American Economic Integration (SIECA) reported today (07.12.2020).
Thus, Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama) will be the First region to apply a unique tool and method of the World Customs Organization (WCO) which allows the measurement of the actual performance of customs activities within the framework of trade facilitation at borders.
The official information was released at the opening of the Regional Workshop on Methodology for the Evaluation of Processes and Measurement of Dispatch Times at Border Posts in Central America, an initiative organized by SIECA and the Central American Customs Committee with the support of the WCO.
With 61 participants from customs and trade authorities The workshop began today within the framework of the implementation of the Central American Strategy for Trade Facilitation and Competitiveness.
“Six Central American countries implement the WCO’s key tool for trade facilitation,” announced Kjoined Mikuria, Secretary General of the WCO, welcoming the participants of the aforementioned event via the social network Twitter.
In that line, the Ambassador Melvin Redondo, Secretary General of SIECA, thanked the international organization for its support. He added: “Capacity building for customs officials is key to trade facilitation and cooperation between regional and multilateral organizations such as the WCO.”
The initiative will measure relevant aspects of the effectiveness of operational procedures implemented by customs and other regulatory agents during the standard processing of import, export and transit movements of goods. It helps customs meet the demands of commercial activity, whose operators need to plan in advance the movements of goods across borders, to comply with production schedules and forward inventory systems. Increasingly, the time required for the release of goods is used as the parameter by which the international trade community evaluates the effectiveness of clearance processes.
The Study will carry out an evaluation of the crossing processes and times of Seven border posts in the Pacific Corridor of Central America and a Proposed Action Plan will be drawn up to serve as a guide for future trade facilitation work in the region. The initiative is being carried out with the aim of European Union funding, according to official data.
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