The Secretary General of the Secretariat for Central American Economic Integration (SIECA), Francisco Lima Mena, held a working meeting on Monday (27.09.2021/XNUMX/XNUMX) with the Director of Panama Customs, Tayra Barsallo, to discuss issues related to trade facilitation and coordinated border management within the framework of integration.
Along these lines, senior officials addressed the reactivation of the Diploma in Customs Technical Management and Central American Economic Integration, an initiative in an advanced process of validation by the University of Panama. Lima Mena said that the corresponding arrangements will be made to resume the project.
In particular, emphasis was placed on the DUCA-F Portal. In this regard, the Director of Customs expressed interest in continuing with phase 2 of the development of the Platform, which includes a data dashboard, a report on unfinished exports, incidents, as well as the transmission of exports from other Central American countries to Panama.
He also suggested establishing a working table for the verification of pending tasks related to compliance with the Customs Union Roadmap and its incorporation into the Central American Economic Subsystem.
During the dialogue, the head of Customs spoke about a plan of Dissemination and socialization of Panama's incorporation into Central American integration, involving the commercial and production sectors and thus making known the benefits of integration, having a humanitarian aid mechanism at a regional level, which includes the registration of emergency vehicle units (ambulance, firefighters, humanitarian aid transport) so that their transit is expedited at a regional level, while still exercising customs control.
Finally, the projects that have been worked on in the Panamanian customs were presented, in order to streamline care processes for the benefit of the country's and the region's logistics. These initiatives have focused on the use of technology. The SIECA delegation highlighted the progress made by Panamanian Customs.
Thus, representatives of SIECA and Panama reaffirmed the mutual interest in coordination to address actions that mean savings in time and costs associated with border crossings, and short-term gains from trade facilitation.
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