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GEA and Trade Facilitation
Trade facilitation refers to measures taken by countries, in the interest of trade efficiency, to reduce the complexity and cost of compliance with official border procedures and the time required to release goods after they have arrived in the country. Because express delivery companies commit to deliver packages to almost any destination in the world within guaranteed timeframes, inefficient, poorly designed, and obsolete border procedures are critical impediments. The GEA and its members have been in the forefront of efforts to automate and streamline border clearance processes, and those efforts continue today.
Compliance and Efficiency:WCO revised Kyoto Convention
Over the years, express delivery companies have made major investments in automated systems to support and facilitate government agencies in carrying out their border control responsibilities. The implicit benefit of these investments, which governments around the world generally acknowledge, is that express consignments will be processed expeditiously and released promptly at the border.
Immediate or expedited Customs release/clearance of express consignments is however usually dependent upon the electronic supply to Customs and other concerned border agencies of specified, quality consignment information at a time sufficiently in advance of the arrival of the consignments to enable those agencies to carry out profiling to support selectivity, to decide whether additional data or documentation is required or whether physical examination should be carried out.
The supply of advance information is a key principle of the WCO Immediate Release Guidelines, originally established as the WCO Express Guidelines back in the early 90s, and is now to be found in the General (obligatory) Annex of the WCO revised Kyoto Convention. The latter has also taken on board another important Customs facilitation principle contained in the Immediate Release Guidelines, that of applying a de-minimis regime whereby certain goods, including documents, not exceeding a certain value or weight, are exempted from import duties and taxes and from full declaration procedures. The application of a de-minimis regime in turn facilitates the application of another important simplification principle, namely the separation of physical release from fiscal clearance. This allows for the operator to take possession of the goods immediately following importation and to complete all required Customs formalities, including the payment of appropriate duties/taxes, within a specified period of time thereafter. Again, both of these procedures are to found in the revised Kyoto Convention, which is why the GEA has been so active in promoting acceptance and implementation of the Convention following its adoption in 1999.
AOther Customs procedures laid down in the revised Kyoto Convention which the GEA has actively promoted on a worldwide basis support the cardinal facilitation principles of simplicity, standardization, transparency and predictability. These include: co-ordinated border controls (so-called "single-window"); the provision of a legal right of appeal to Customs and, if necessary, the right to a further appeal to an independent authority; the application of risk management techniques for control purposes; the establishment of formal Customs/trade consultative bodies to allow discussion of impending changes in laws, regulations and special, simplified procedures for authorized traders/economic operators.
The Doha Development Agenda
The Doha Development Agenda, undertaken by the World Trade Organization in November 2001, has made trade facilitation, in particular expediting further the movement, release and clearance of goods, one of the major topics to be covered in forthcoming negotiations. In so doing, the WTO has clearly recognized that trade facilitation is instrumental in ensuring the full realization of the benefits of trade liberalization flowing from successive rounds of multilateral negotiations - to the advantage, in particular, of developing and transition economies, and of small and medium-sized enterprises. The largest potential for improvement in trade facilitation exists in developing and least-developed countries, and they are therefore likely to be the main beneficiaries. The recently-adopted WTO trade facilitation agreement will augment the capacity of these countries to enlarge their share of international trade, not least their trade with other developing countries.
Trade facilitation is all the more important for business at a time when security requirements risk slowing down cross-border trade. The trade facilitation agreement is fundamental to the establishment of an improved and more efficient management process for international trade in goods on a global basis. All WTO member countries will benefit from it - especially those burdened with the least efficient trading processes, either through infrastructure or managerial limitations or because of procedural barriers being imposed by trading partners.
Of course, it has also been recognized that to enable developing and least-developed countries to fully participate in and benefit from the forthcoming negotiations resulting from the trade facilitation agreement, they should be provided with technical assistance and support for capacity building. Such assistance will also be required to help them implement the commitments resulting from the negotiations. Clearly, to make technical assistance and capacity building more effective and operational, there needs to be the close co-operation and co-ordination between the relevant international organizations, including the World Bank, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD and WCO, and in this regard, as well as in the future development and implementation of agreed common strategies, the GEA stands ready to assist in any way it possibly can.
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