WCO Asia Pacific Vice-chair actively participated on the 16th Global Meeting for Regional Structure together with other regional Vice-chairs and regional entities. The chairperson for this annual meeting is Mr. Hisyam F. Abou Ibrahim from Lebanon RTC. This meeting aims to enhance the collaboration with the Regional Entities and welcome their contributions in the areas of capacity building, training, and technical assistance in order to promote the effectiveness of the Regional Entities.
This meeting was held for two days. On the first day, Mr. Taeil Kang, Director of Capacity Building of WCO delivered his opening remarks. In his remakrs, Mr. Kang emphasized that this meeting has been expanded particularly in terms of Regional Structures to improve collaboration and coordination. During the outbreak of COVID-19, the WCO Secretariat together with Regional Structures have tried their best effort in organizing technical assistance and capacity building for revenue collection, trade facilitation and security in response to members’ needs, and they would discuss and evaluate the great effort and action of WCO and regional structures in handling the capacity building through this meeting. At the end of his remarks, Mr. Kang believed that this meeting would provide an excellence opportunity to exchange views and experiences to strengthen regional structures professionalism and expertise.
During the meeting, there are some documents of the meeting that required endorsement from the meeting participants. Firstly, the Chair invited all meeting participants to give comments regarding the ToR of the Global Meeting for the Regional Entities. It aims to enhance the collaboration with the Regional Entities and welcome their contributions in the areas of capacity building, training, and technical assistance in order to promote the effectiveness of the Regional Entities. It was continued by discussing the Action plan on the WCO organizational development package. Then, Guide for a successful transition to live virtual training was also explained by the Chair. Mostly, the meeting participants supported the all documents provided to be endorsed on the Capacity Building Committee meeting on 22-24 February 2021.
Mr. Syarif Hidayat, Chief Executive of the WCO AP Vice-chair Secretariat delivered the presentation to represent the region with the topic Enhance Cooperation and Coordination among the Regional Structures in Asia Pacific Region. In his presentation, Mr. Hidayat emphasized the 4 key drivers for successful cooperation and coordination in Asia Pacific Region. Overall, optimizing a comprehensive and effective communication among members and regional structures through virtual meetings is significant to analyze the current issues and prioritize the main interests and needs in the region.
On the second day, the Heads of ROCB from the six regions delivered the report about the development of the Capacity Building activities in each region. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, mostly the capacity building activities conducted virtually in all regions. Then, it was continued by the overview of the Capacity Building week to provide the regional structures with the useful information to enable them to participate actively in the Capacity Building Committee and Integrity Sub Committee. After that, each WCO directorate informed the recent developments, especially focusing on areas which have impact on Capacity Building activities and on the structures.
After all mandatory agenda items were finished, the representative from Europe Customs Laboratory delivered the presentation about the Customs Laboratories European Network (CLEN) program. The meeting was closed by Mr. Taeil Kang by mentioning the next year Global Meeting for Regional Structures and he hoped could see all meeting participants in person at WCO headquarters in Brussels next year.
