The 8th Steering Committee (SC) Meeting of the Finnish-funded WCO Project "Building Trade Capacity through Customs Modernization in the East and Southern Africa (ESA) Region" took place in Brussels, Belgium, on the 10th of June 2014 in the margins of the WCO Council sessions. Members of the Project SC are Malawi, South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finnish Customs and the WCO Secretariat.
The Project started in September 2011 and focuses on the 5 key Project components in support of the WCO ESA Region: Leadership and Management Development, nCEN implementation and use, Coordinated Border Management, support to the ESA ROCB and country-specific support for Namibia.
The 8th SC Meeting welcomed the progress made so far in all Project components in the Region and highly appreciated the number of activities (25) carried out during the first 8 months of the 4th project year.
The SC took note on the several activities carried out within the CBM and SW: Top management Dialogue held in French, Site visits, SW workshop, special tailor made assistance on CBM and contracting a Single Window expert to assist the Mauritius Revenue Authority to finalize the implementation of SW.
It was also highly appreciated that nine countries in the region are now using the nCEN application as their main enforcement and risk management operational tool.
The SC took note also on the financial report, and approved the Project Work Plan until the end of December 2015.
The next and the last meeting of the SC will take place in Finland in March 2016.
For further information on the Project, please feel free to contact the Project Manager in Nairobi, Ms. Riitta Passi (riitta.passi@gmail.com), or the Acting Deputy Director for the Capacity Building Directorate, Mr. Matthew Bannon (matthew.bannon@wcoomd.org).