Since my appointment in June time seems to have flown by. Most of our key business projects are now in full swing, and we will soon have had a full round of Policy Group meetings.
This autumn, the WTO negotiations are building towards the Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong; and as preparation for this we have just held a very successful regional meeting of the Boksburg Group in Brazil. In Europe, the EU customs modernisation programme comes to a head this month with another key Ministerial meeting committing Member States to the Multi-Annual Strategic Plan. At home, the UK International Trade Single Window project is taking off fast.
SITPRO is contributing in these and other areas, e.g. security. It is clear that more stakeholder engagement will be needed, particularly on the single window project, for which we are establishing a specific task force, given the read-across it has to many areas of our work.
We will begin work shortly on our Business Plan for 2006/07. We will have a smaller budget than this year but continuing demands on staff resources. We are likely to have secondment opportunities for people whose organisations might find it useful to loan them to us for specific short-term tasks. If any of our stakeholders are interested I would be glad to discuss possibilities with them.
Return to SITPRO News: Issue 54, Autumn 2005
