19 - 22 December 2022, Bali, Indonesia

The WCO Regional Workshop on the Revised Kyoto Convention (the RKC) for Asia Pacific members was held in Bali Indonesia from 19-22 December 2022 sponsored by the Customs Cooperation Fund of China (CCF-China). From ROCB A/P, Ms. Zhengqing Ye, the Program Manager and Operation Manager of the CCF-China and Ms. Vareemon CHAIRUNGSRILER, the Program Coordinator supported in organizing this workshop.

Ms. Ye warmly welcomed the experts and participants to join the RKC regional workshop, and she emphasized the importance of RKC in the trade facilitation context in her opening remarks. During the workshop she introduced ROCB A/P’s capacity building activities such as organizing workshops and publishing various materials for information sharing. She demonstrated a commitment to assisting AP Members in building their capacity by ROCB A/P. She also explained the Follow-up Actions Survey, which aims to take a snapshot of the impact of WCO capacity building activities on AP Members’ performance and encouraged the participants to take action to utilize lessons learnt from this workshop.

This event gathered a total of 27 Customs officials from the region attended the workshop in-person, and about 15 officials joined online from the General Administration of Customs of China (GACC) and the Korea Customs Service. Overall, 22 Contracting Parties and 2 Observers (Timor Leste and Brunei Darussalam) to the RKC participated in the workshop.

As we all know, the RKC presents a blueprint for modern and efficient Customs procedures in the 21st century to facilitate legitimate trade while not compromising the Customs control function. It provides a comprehensive and basic set of international Customs standards, it also serves as a basis for other Customs instruments and constitutes a benchmark for successful capacity building activities. In this regard, reviewing and understanding the RKC and ensuring proper implementation by customs administrations is of vital importance.

This regional workshop provided an ample opportunity for our Members Administrations to better understand the implementation issues and challenges faced by the contracting parties. In addition, the workshop was briefly updated on the relationship between the RKC and the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement and on the status of the on-going comprehensive review of the RKC.

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