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WCO supports the Zambia Revenue Authority in its ambition to establish a full-fledged Authorized Economic Operators (AEO) programme

29 marzo 2022

Under the framework of the by the United Kingdom’s Her Majesty’s Customs & Revenue (HMRC) Trade Facilitation Capacity Building Programme, the WCO delivered in-country support to the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) to establish an Authorized Economic Operators (AEO) programme that would be aligned with the SAFE Framework of Standards and Article 7.7 of the WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement. The mission, which took place from 7 to 11 March 2022, was supported by three experts from the South Africa Revenue Service (SARS), the Burundi Customs and the United States Customs and Border Protection (USCBP), built on remote support rendered in 2021 to enhance ZRA’s Customs Client Accredited Programme (CACP) – the existing compliance based programme that aims to offer faster clearance for accredited businesses.

While the ZRA has made significant progress in the past years in setting up its current CACP Programme, as illustrated by an increasing number of accredited businesses, further work remains to transform the existing CACP to a fully-fledged AEO Programme in line with international standards, including the required security standards.

The mission included on-sight validation exercises at a company in order to obtain insights in remaining gaps. Furthermore, dedicated training and in-depth deliberations took place with the ZRA AEO team. This resulted in a clear understanding of the current state of play and served to identify forward recommendations.

The ZRA underlined that the WCO’s capacity building on AEO directly supports the administration’s strategic ambition to establish Mutual Recognition Agreements with neighboring countries to further streamline and yield the benefits of TFA implementation. Going forward, the WCO looks forward to continue a strategic multi-year Mercator collaboration with the ZRA to further enhance TFA implementation under the, by HMRC supported programme, a next three year phase of which will kick-off in April 2022 called the ‘Accelerate Trade Facilitation’.

See for more information on the ‘Accelerate Trade Facilitation’ Programme, please, click here World Customs Organization (wcoomd.org) or contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org.