A national workshop on Post Clearance Audit (PCA) was organized by the WCO Secretariat and the ROCB A/P from 16 to 20 November 2015 in Apia, Samoa, under the sponsorship of Customs Cooperation Funds (CCF) of Japan.

This workshop was the last one of the first round of follow-up national workshops after the multi-year Post Clearance Audit Project for Oceania Customs Organization (OCO) Members, conducted by the WCO Secretariat and the ROCB A/P from 2011 to 2013, and supported by CCF Japan.

The two main project’s objectives consisted in the development of the OCO PCA Guidelines, which were adopted as the regional Guidelines on PCA by the OCO Council in May 2013, as well as in the creation of a pool of national trainers in the respective participating OCO Members.

The project’s activities aimed at supporting the participating WCO Members in their training programme on these new PCA Guidelines. National trainers were also provided with hands-on teaching -experiences through their national Workshops, and this workshop in Apia was the last one of this kind.

A total of 19 Customs officers from the PCA and PCA-related Sections as well as 5 officers from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) attended the workshop. A series of lectures, case studies and exercises were led by Mr. Takayuki Miyoshi, a WCO Accredited Customs Expert (ACE) from the ROCB A/P, and by Ms. Maki Hirata, an Expert from Japan Customs.

The participants actively contributed to the workshop and a number of issues were raised and discussed. This workshop gave the participants the opportunity to update their knowledge on PCA and to show them the importance of cooperation among the various departments, including IRS, for achieving proper revenue collection while maintaining trade facilitation.