14 -18 November, 2022, Brisbane, Australia

The 32nd Asia Pacific Regional Contact Points Meeting was held in Brisbane, Australia on 14 -18 November 2022 in hybrid mode hosted by Asia Pacific Vice Chair. Mr. Norikazu KURAMOTO, the Head of the ROCB A/P together with Program Managers, Ms. Zhengqing YE and Ms. Sherman YU joined this meeting.

Mr. KURAMOTO introduced the outline of the ROCB A/P and its activities including workshop delivery plan in this FY and its cooperation framework with regional entities in the Asia Pacific region. In particular, he emphasized the importance of the annual needs survey on capacity building which will be conducted in December 2022 and encouraged timely feedbacks to ROCB A/P. He also requested Asia Pacific members' cooperation related to Training Management supporting activities conducted by the ROCB A/P.

He also made implementation report on new Regional Strategic Plan 2022-24 (RSP) Focus Area 3 (Capacity Building) on the behalf of co-coordinator with Japan Customs and encouraged Asia Pacific members’ active participation to capacity building activity in the Asia Pacific region in aligned with Focus Area 3. During group discussion sessions, Ms. YE and Ms. YU actively joined breakout sessions on discussion for linking the WCO Implementation Plan 2022‑2023 to the RSP and Supply Chain Integrity as well as made the summaries of the group discussion respectively.

As for the regional entity’s application matter Australia, Hong Kong China and Indonesia expressed their intentions to be accredited as the Regional Dog Training Centers (RDTC). Taking this opportunity, the ROCB expressed the sincere gratitude to the above three administrations for the willingness to make more contributions in this region. Many delegates welcomed the initiatives and this RCP meeting endorsed to forward to the RHCA next year.

This RCP meeting consists of the Asia Pacific members as well as the WCO Secretariat, RILO AP and ROCB A/P. During the meeting, the WCO’s updates including its hot topics and new WCO Strategic Plan 2022-25, the achievements made by the RILO A/P were reported and discussed in addition to that ROCB A/P. Moreover, all the participants joined 2 group discussion sessions. The quality of the presentations and the depth of the discussions, together with the sharing of experience and best practice, enabled the Contact Points Meeting to build a clearer picture of progress with Customs reform and modernization strategies in the AP region.

For more information, please contact at rocb@rocbap.org.