16 - 19 January 2023, Suva, Fiji

The WCO Sub-regional Workshop on cross-border E-commerce was held at the WCO Regional Training Centre (RTC) in Suva, Fiji, from 16 to 19 January 2023 with the financial support of the Customs Cooperation Fund of China (CCF-China). A total of 12 Customs officials from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Timor-Leste, Tonga and Vanuatu attended the workshop in-person. As the representatives of the ROCB A/P, Ms. Zhengqing Ye, the Program Manager and Operation Manager of the CCF-China and Ms. Kanyawarat Sitthikunpanit, the Program Coordinator joined this workshop.

Ms. Ye expressed her gratitude to the WCO experts and the RTC Fiji for supporting this workshop and emphasized the increased importance of trade facilitation for cross-border E-Commerce and the full implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement in order to lower costs and increase efficiency in international trade in her opening remarks. During the workshop she also introduced the ROCB A/P’s capacity building activities such as 2022/23 ROCB Action Plan and official publication. She demonstrated ROCB A/P’s commitment to assisting AP Members in building their capacity. Moreover, she introduced the Follow-up Actions Survey conducted by the ROCB A/P to encourage the participants to utilize lessons learnt from this workshop to improve their home administrations’ ability to adapt to the fast-evolving e-commerce environment.

Over the span of 4 days, important Customs topics relating to 16 standards of the WCO Framework of Standards on Cross-Border E-Commerce were examined and discussed. The six beneficiary Members were invited to deliver presentations focusing on revenue collection, facilitation, and control of cross-border e-commerce, which were the basis for valuable exchanges of information on challenges and possible solutions.

During his closing remarks, the Chief Executive Officer of the Fiji Revenue and Customs Service, Mark Dixon, highlighted the opportunity provided by the Workshop to enhance cooperation in the sub-region on the important topic of cross-border e-commerce and expressed his readiness to support future sub-regional events at the WCO RTC in Fiji.

This Sub-Regional workshop provided an ample opportunity for our Member Administrations to leverage the knowledge obtained during the workshop to implement the E-Commerce FoS in view of addressing the challenges emanating from the growing volumes of e-commerce.

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