Under the auspices of the WCO-INAMA project (funded by Sweden, US Department of State, GiZ and CITES Secretariat) the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) received further support from the WCO in strengthening its intelligence function. The primary objective of this activity was to improve MRA’s intelligence capacity with a focus on the illegal wildlife trade.

This support was provided through a WCO experts’ mission to the MRA headquarters in Blantyre, held from 13th to 17th March 2017.

In the framework of this mission the MRA appointed team, with the advice of the WCO experts, drafted a business case for going ahead with the process of implementing an Intelligence Function.

During the mission the WCO team met with the Commissioner General of MRA, Mr. Tom Gray Malata, with Commissioner-Customs & Excise Mr. Fatch Valeta, and with several Directors and Deputy Directors from MRA as well. The Commissioner General stressed, once again, the importance of using intelligence to inform risk management and investigations, and confirmed his strong support for this initiative.

The above-mentioned business case which was developed by the MRA team was submitted to the Commissioners General for approval during the last day of the mission. The Commissioner General of the MRA recently informed the WCO in a formal letter that the MRA had endorsed the recommendations of the team, and that they also had adopted the business case as a guiding tool to ensure successful implementation of this endeavour that would bring benefits to MRA beyond the main objective of the INAMA project.

The mission was funded by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GiZ).

For more information about this mission and the WCO-INAMA Project, please contact the WCO-INAMA project manager, Marco Foddi (marco.foddi@wcoomd.org).