Liberia’s first activity as a partner administration of the WCO’s Anti-Corruption and Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme for Customs took place in Monrovia, Liberia 20-24th May 2019. During the week, WCO experts facilitated a workshop on integrity development. The workshop was attended by senior representatives from 11 different competency areas within the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA), all with responsibilities related to the Revised Arusha Declaration, governance and integrity in Customs. An expert from the Turkish Ministry of Customs and Trade provided the workshop participants with practical applications of integrity initiatives.
The working group drafted an outline of the priorities and key areas that will serve as the foundation of LRA’s integrity strategy and action plan, which will be supported by the WCO A-CIP Programme through the year 2023. The working group identified three key elements or areas on which to focus efforts: human resource management (building on the work conducted under the former WCO WACAM project), morale and organizational culture (specifically, knowledge and change management), and regulatory framework (focusing on duty free policies and procedures).
The Commissioner General of LRA expressed his full support for the workshop, its output, along with the identification of teams within LRA that will take forward specific action points. This was also fully endorsed at the end of the mission by the Commissioner Customs. In an effort to increase donor coordination, the week’s activities were conducted in parallel with a delegation from the International Monetary Fund who were in Monrovia to assess customs modernization matters, including integrity.
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). 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