Under the auspices of WCO-SACU Connect Project financed by Sweden, the Southern African Customs Union (SACU)’s Member States convened a workshop, which took place from 25 to 27 September 2017 in Gaborone, Botswana, to facilitate the development of the SACU regional Customs Compliance Strategy to provide a framework and guidance on the implementation of Compliance improvement programmes in the SACU Region.  

Eighteen representatives of SACU Member States Customs Administrations, including seven women, represented by their respective Strategy Experts, Compliance Management Experts and Risk Management Experts, worked determinedly with the WCO and SACU Secretariats to develop a comprehensive first draft of this regional strategy.

The SACU Compliance Management Strategy will be instrumental to positioning any compliance management programme in the region, such as the SACU Preferred Trader programme. During the working sessions, lessons were drawn from the work done to date at Member States level on Compliance Management to inform the process of developing the regional level strategy to ensure that it corresponds to the context of the SACU region. Moreover, elements of compliance strategy - namely legislative basis, client service, compliance assessment, compliance recognition and compliance enforcement - were discussed in detail leading to the adoption of a Customs Compliance Model to guide the SACU Customs Compliance Management Strategy development.

The first draft of the SACU Customs Compliance Management Strategy is currently undergoing national consultations, and the final draft of the strategy is targeted to be concluded early November 2017, before submission for the WCO-SACU Connect Steering Committee consideration and approval. 

Thanks to this key regional strategy, SACU Member States will highly benefit from structured and standardised Customs Compliance Management practices in the SACU region. Furthermore, it is hoped that the adoption and implementation of the regional Compliance Management Strategy will contribute to increasing the level of voluntary compliance in the region, hence contributing to regional trade facilitation and economic development.  

For more information about the activity or about the WCO-SACU Connect Project, please contact Mr. Richard Chopra, WCO-Sweden Programme Director, Richard.Chopra@wcoomd.org