In this interview, the Head of Digitalization and Process Administration at the National Customs Authority of Panama refers to the Central American Digital Trade Platform (PDCC), the benefits of its functionalities for users, and a measure recently implemented in his country - the digital traveler's declaration - which has brought benefits to the entire community.
Felipe León represents Panama in the Technical Regulatory Group and the Technical Information Group attached to the Central American Customs Committee, an entity that has been in charge of energizing the work assigned to it in the area of regional regulations, trade facilitation, and customs control.
Read the full conversation.
Aduana News: Central American countries have achieved important results in trade facilitation, for example, the design and implementation of the Central American Digital Trade Platform. Can you summarize the PDCC model?
Felipe Leon: The Central American Digital Trade Platform or PDCC is a tool that seeks to improve -with methodology of Business Project Management- intra and extra regional trade processes, digitalizing them.
Panama has been part of Central America since 2013, which means that it has a rapidly growing Customs Union. To this end, the Customs Committee and the Technical Working Groups on regulations and IT have been created.
The PDCC is intended to have a platform that interconnects the computer systems of customs, as well as all the institutions involved in trade processes as appropriate. To do this, it is necessary to standardize the processes and the exchange of information. For example: phytosanitary certificates and payment methods.
In other words, the Central American Digital Trade Platform seeks to connect all systems into a single platform, becoming the only way of interacting with the procedure. This is the main objective of the PDCC.
To this end, the analysis has been underway since 2018, seeking the functionalities that could be implemented by the PDCC.
More than fifty functionalities were detected, and Customs is involved in most of them; that is, cargo manifests (air, sea and land), cargo consolidation, international transit, import and export declarations, among others.
Since not all functionalities could be implemented, the PDCC is being developed under two models: the unified model and the nested model.
1) Unified: the procedures are centralized in the PDCC, with interoperability towards the countries. (This is the second objective of the PDCC).
2) Nested: the procedures are implemented in the national system that the customs has, where the Interoperability Bus articulates information and can interoperate with the PDCC.
AN: What has the PDCC achieved?
Felipe Leon: The PDCC has managed to pass through regulatory compliance as such. It is currently in the stage of implementing nested functionalities in tests with countries.
Recently, Panama has implemented the Drivers Database. This is a national registry with regional impact; that is, the other Central American customs offices have access to the information for consultation purposes. Likewise, Panama can consult the drivers database of other countries.
In addition to the query, the functionality has already been implemented to facilitate the carrier's completion of the international transit declaration, speeding up the time. Its use will soon be mandatory for the international transit of goods.
Panama has also implemented the database of Authorized Economic Operators. It should be noted that the Central American customs have a mutual recognition agreement for their AEO programs to ensure and facilitate trade between countries to a greater extent. In view of this, the Authorized Economic Operators database allows the identification of certified traders in order to grant them the benefits contemplated.
Another upcoming implementation will be the database of recognised Customs Civil Service Assistants, as well as the database of the Transport Units used by drivers for international land transport.
AN: What are the benefits for trade?
Felipe Leon: The benefits relate to the digitalisation of foreign trade procedures, as well as to the fulfilment of the objective of paperless customs. This promotes trade facilitation, which reduces time and costs. In this regard, the issuance and sending of health certificates on a regional server has already been implemented.
The aim is also to streamline and coordinate immigration controls. To this end, work will be carried out in conjunction with the Immigration area on what is known as “immigration pre-check.” This means that when a driver has submitted the international transit declaration, the immigration authority of each country will know which transport unit the driver has in order to carry out the effective compliance check to authorize his entry.
AN: The effectiveness of the proposed solutions requires effective controls for the entry and exit of people who travel. Can you talk about the new digital traveler declaration in Panama?
Felipe Leon:The Digital Traveler's Declaration will be launched in 2022, after the form has been approved at the Central American regional level.
In 2023, a new resolution will be made to implement the technological tools to present the traveler's declaration processing in digital format. This Declaration has already been implemented at the Tocumen International Airport (Terminals 1 and 2), as well as at the Paso Canoas land border, which has the highest volume of trade with Central America.
This is the transitional moment for user and civil servant learning. To date, 13.718 declarations have been processed.
The benefits are:
- Streamlining the process of entering the country, offering a quick response with QR.
- Saving resources by eliminating the use of paper.
- Traceability, offering key information in real time.
- Transparency and control with a view to preventing and combating money laundering and terrorism.
- Elimination of physical storage space.
This project, led by the National Director of Customs, Tyra Barsallo, has been a challenge that has brought multiple benefits to the entire community (travelers, airlines and authorities) with an impact on tourism.
AN: Could you close this interview with a final message?
Felipe Leon: The message is that digitalisation means more transparency and facilitation of trade.
Making things easier for the operator will lead to greater compliance. As the former Secretary General of the WCO taught: “Borders divide, but customs connect.”
I therefore invite my colleagues in the customs and logistics sectors to support the digitalisation processes with participation and constructive criticism.
Aduana News is the first Argentine customs newspaper to launch its digital version. With 20 years of experience, its publications and initiatives aim to provide the most relevant knowledge on customs issues in order to contribute to safe trade in the region.
