Director visiting Swedish donors
February 2009
In February the Director of Capacity Building, Mr. Lars Karlsson, visited Stockholm for meetings with the Swedish donor community and potential partners. On February 24th the Director met with the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA) at their headquarters in Stockholm. SIDA has over the last years been a large donor to the WCO and the Columbus programme. Several programmes are sponsored by SIDA and the Swedish Government, like e.g. the WCO-EAC project, upcoming WCO-SACU project, SIDA support for West Africa, SIDA support for activities in East and Southern Africa, SIDA support for the Regional Office for Capacity Building in the East and Southern Africa region and support for the WCO language fund. During the meeting there were discussions about these projects but also a dialogue on potential further cooperation for other projects and geographical areas. Mr. Karlsson said “I had several good and positive meetings in Stockholm and the discussions with SIDA and the Swedish National Board of Trade, were particularly interesting and promising for the future. These are partners that we, the WCO, know and have been working with for some time and their interest of continuing the cooperation and maybe even expanding the support for the future is naturally a very positive signal for our Members under difficult times due to the Global Financial Crises”.