Ethiopia’s first activity as a partner administration of the WCO’s Anti-Corruption and Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme for Customs took place in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia from 3-6 June 2019. During the week, WCO experts worked alongside Ethiopian Customs Commission’s senior officials to identify priority areas aimed at reinforcing integrity in Customs using the Revised Arusha Declaration as a canvass.
The participants identified three key areas on which to concentrate efforts: human resources management, regulatory framework (focus on risk management) and relationship with private sector. The results of this scoping exercise will help to develop a detailed project plan or roadmap over the next 5 years to assist the Ethiopian Customs Commission (ECC) to proactively apply international integrity best practices and be recognized as a model for integrity and anti-corruption in the Ethiopian Public Service.
In his workshop’s opening remarks, Mr. Debele Kebeta Hursa, the Commissioner of the newly formed Ethiopian Customs Commission (ECC), clearly placed the core value of integrity at the forefront of the growth and development of the new organization as an efficient and modern customs administration. The Ethiopian Customs Commission (ECC) was created, on 29th November 2018, following a split of the Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority (ERCA) into two distinct and independent entities namely the Ethiopian Ministry of Revenues and the Ethiopian Customs Commission (ECC).
The WCO Anti-Corruption and Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme was launched in January 2019 and is financed by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) through the year 2023. It aims to provide support to beneficiary countries in the implementation of new measures to fight corruption and promote integrity in accordance with the ten areas of the Revised Arusha Declaration.
For more details, please contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org