In coordination with the Americas and Caribbean Region’s Vice-Chair, the Regional Office for Capacity Building, and the Customs Administration of Guatemala, the WCO Secretariat organized from 07 to 11 May 2012 the first accreditation workshop for Spanish-speaking expert-trainers in Valuation in the city of Antigua, Guatemala. This event gathered 12 pre-selected customs officers thanks to the financial support of the Customs Cooperation Fund of Japan.

During a 5-day intensive programme, experts from Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela demonstrated their skills and abilities as expert-trainers in the area of Customs valuation. The event was facilitated by the Secretariat’s representatives (from both Directorates of Capacity Building and Tariff and Trade Affairs) and the director of WCO Regional Training Centre in Brasilia, Brazil. 4 expert-trainers have been accredited to lead WCO-branded training activities in the region.

The most important outcome of this workshop was the creation of a regional experts working group made up of the 12 highly motivated participants and 4 observers of the Administration of Guatemala. They will, among other things, conduct a review of the WCO standardized training content such as the e-learning modules and the kits for trainers available on the WCO CliKC! platform. The review and upgrade proposals will be done under the coordination of the Regional Office for Capacity Building in the Americas and the Caribbean based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the Regional Training Centres.

This is an unprecedented result as the participants took the full ownership of the experts group’s objectives, and drafted its terms of reference, action planning and working methodology to be submitted to the ROCB. Their collaborative work will efficiently support the regionalization strategy implementation thanks to the maintenance and adaptation of the WCO training tools in accordance with their region’s specificities. Moreover, this event demonstrates that the WCO is successfully articulating its capacity building strategy throughout sequences of events which provide tangible results and develop follow-up activities ensuring a sustainable impact in the regions.

This workshop has been a major achievement for the Americas and Caribbean region, allowing increasing the regional pool of experts available to provide WCO technical assistance in Spanish as well as contributing to equip 12 administrations with high-level experts exposed to new international collaboration opportunities.