A regional workshop on transit, held in Baku, Azerbaijan from 13 to 15 November 2018, gathered transit experts from Member Customs Administrations from East and South-East Europe, Central Asia and four Members of the Asia-Pacific region – China, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan. A representative of the European Commission also attended the workshop and contributed to the discussions. The event was organized with the financial support of the Chinese Customs Cooperation Fund (CCF China) and was hosted by the State Customs Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the European Regional Office for Capacity Building of the World Customs Organization (WCO).
The workshop agenda covered all sections of the WCO Transit Guidelines launched in July 2017. A dedicated workshop session discussed transit by rail and the WCO initiatives in the area of Customs-Railways cooperation. In each workshop session, the WCO set the scene by presenting the guiding principles for the establishment of efficient and effective transit regimes as outlined in the various sections of the WCO Transit Guidelines and the participants shared and discussed good practices, challenges and measures for further improvement of the various aspects of transit. Highly informative presentations were delivered by the European Commission, the Asian Development Bank in its capacity as the Secretariat of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Program and the Customs administrations of Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey.
The transit workshop for selected Members of the WCO Europe and Asia-Pacific regions was the fourth in a series of regional events organized by the WCO with the objective of promoting the implementation of the WCO Transit Guidelines and the establishment by Members of efficient and effective transit regimes in their territories.