Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, the World Customs Organizations (WCO) organized a virtual webinar Workshop for the Argentina Customs Administration. The Workshop was held in Spanish for four days, from 5 to 8 October 2020, and was co-facilitated by two WCO TRS experts. About 30 Customs officials from the Argentina Customs Administration attended the event.

The aim of the Workshop was to support Argentina Customs in carrying out its first TRS focusing on the Customs intervention in the national clearance process, with a view to measure the actual time required for the release and/or clearance of goods, from the time of arrival until the physical release of the cargo, and to find bottlenecks in the trade flow process of cargo so that necessary measures for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of Customs procedures can be taken.

During the event, the WCO experts provided detailed guidance on the TRS methodology, the reason for countries to draft a business process, the importance of creating a national TRS action plan useful to foster the implementation of national TRS and the key aspects and features related to the WCO TRS software required to carry out TRS.

With the support of the WCO TRS experts, the Customs officials from Argentina drafted a tentative action plan that will be likely to be used to support the implementation of TRS in Argentina. At the end of the workshop, the officials expressed their appreciation and reiterated the readiness of the Customs Administration to carry out a TRS.