Malcolm McKinnon Speaking at the World Customs Forum
The World Customs Organisation is establishing a vision for Customs in the 21st Century and at the end of March invited key organisations to a Global Forum in Brussels to help them in this process. Speaking at the Forum, SITPRO's Chief Executive Malcolm McKinnon argued that there was increasing acceptance that the role of Customs encompasses far more than it used to. Increasingly, and rightly, the priority was now on 'trade management' - how to manage the border, and in co-operation or partnership with business.
At the same time, driven by the security debate, Customs is now performing its gatekeeper role in relation to wider threats - terrorism, economic crime, health and social protection, even immigration. Malcolm referred to the avalanche of new security-motivated controls and initiatives, reported in SITPRO's recent study of security measures affecting UK traders (see last issue) and described as 'security spaghetti', which risks working against facilitating trade. Referring to the US's 100% scanning initiative, he said, "If traders are given a badge of trust they need to be trusted."
Malcolm noted that while the WCO had an important role to play in supporting the development of Customs bodies in the 21st Century, it did not have all the expertise required and needed to work in co-operation, not competition, with other organisations if initiatives and systems were to work properly and yield the most benefits. He emphasised the importance of the UNeDocs and WCO Data Models being integrated into a single open standard and urged Council agreement to the Cross-Border Reference Data Model project at its June meeting. This would be vital if traders were to be able to enjoy the benefits of straight-through processing of international trade data.
You can read Malcom's full speech and view his presentation to the World Customs Forum at www.sitpro.org.uk/speeches/mmwcoforum280308.html.
Return to SITPRO News: Issue 64, Spring 2008
