The WCO conducted a Sub-Regional Workshop on Regional Interconnectivity and Data Exchange for five Member Customs administrations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) from 4th to 8th April 2022 in Gaborone, Botswana. This highly interactive workshop was delivered to the Customs administrations of Botswana, Eswatini, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, under the auspices of the Sida-WCO Trade Facilitation and Customs Modernization (TFCM) Programme, with funding from the Government of Sweden.
35 Customs officials from the five Administrations, with wide-ranging expertise and responsibilities, including IT, Risk Management, Post Clearance Audit and Customs procedures, were upskilled on how to adopt the WCO tools and instruments, such as Data Model (DM) and Unique Consignment Reference (UCR) number, and implement various national initiatives on Customs systems interconnectivity through the Globally Networked Customs (GNC) concept. To that end, the workshop emphasized the participants’ practical implementation of the WCO DM ‘My Information Package (MyIP)’ by utilizing the DM App.
In that regard, the Customs administrations are now enabled to finalize ongoing projects for bilateral data exchange, using harmonized and standardized approaches based on the WCO Data Model, GNC and UCR standards. The WCO support, utilizing regional experts from the South African Revenue Service (SARS) and WCO secretariat, will further contribute to the wider application of a standardized and harmonized regional approach to Customs interconnectivity in the SADC region.
The effort complements SADC region’s objective to develop a regional framework for Customs interconnectivity, a priority that the Sida-WCO TFCM Programme would collaborate with SADC Secretariat to achieve.
For more information on this mission and the Sida-WCO TFCM Programme, please contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org.