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ROK holds the Inaugural Meeting of GTI Customs Sub-Committee
2016/12/20 13:09:42 Views:
The Inaugural GTI Customs Sub-Committee Meeting was held on 13 December 2016 in Incheon, Republic of Korea (ROK). At the 16th GTI Consultative Commission Meeting (28 APR 2016, Seoul, ROK), the GTI member countries approved the restructuring of the former GTI Trade Facilitation Committee into the Trade and Investment Committee (TIC) which will tackle broader issues on trade and investment and the Customs Sub-Committee (CSC) under TIC which will handle trade facilitation agendas in customs domain. The Customs officials from the GTI member countries, experts from International Organizations including UNESCAP and other GTI partners took part in the first meeting of GTI CSC.
The participants approved the new Terms of Reference (ToR) of CSC, shared progress in trade facilitation, discussed project proposals and adopted the Work Plan for 2017. The details are as follows:
Regarding the ToR of CSC, the participants agreed to add one more objective of “working closely to contribute to the effective integration of national development strategies of the GTI member countries”, reflecting the importance of integrating regional development initiatives from the GTI member countries such as the Belt and Road Initiative, Steppe Road Plan, Eurasia Initiative and Trans-Eurasia Corridor.
The GTI Secretariat and the CSC members shared their efforts in facilitating trade each other to share recent information for future cooperation. The efforts included diverse issues including customs operation reforms (e.g. streamlining and simplifying clearance procedure at major ports), implementation of AEO program replacing former compliance program, organization of trade facilitation seminar and full-scale modernization of customs administration (e.g. interagency electronic communication).
During the CSC meeting, the participants approved the project proposal presented by UNECSCAP titled “GTI/ESCAP Workshop on Cross-border Trade Facilitation and Single Window” which aims at assessing current practices of information interaction among the GTI member countries and formulating a proposal for creating a concrete GTI Single Window environment. The project is supposed to be implemented in April 2017 in Vladivostok, Russian Federation after getting prior approval from the GTI National Coordinators.
Finally, the participants adopted the Work Plan for 2017 including annual meeting, international seminar, capacity building workshop, AEO working group activities, partnership building, etc.
The 2nd GTI CSC Meeting will be hosted and chaired by the Mongolian customs in November 2017 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The GTI Secretariat will provide full support to successfully implement the result of the inaugural meeting of CSC until the next meeting in 2017.