18-19 July 2023, Pohnpei, Micronesia

Upon the invitation of the Oceania Customs Organization (OCO) Secretariat, Mr. Norikazu Kuramoto, the Head of the ROCB A/P, actively participated in the 25th OCO Annual Conference at Pohnpei, the Federated Stats of Micronesia.

During the Conference, Mr. Kuramoto introduced on the capacity building activities done by ROCB A/P in close cooperation with WCO at the last fiscal year. He highlighted workshop activities including the Mater Trainer Program on HS and CV for Pacific members. He also briefly explained the WCO SIEs initiative started in 2018 and WCO SIEs Guidance document issued in Dec 2020 which is supporting and reference material to address the unique challenges for Pacific members. In addition to that, he introduced WCO Human Resource Development programs namely Carrie Development Programme, Fellowship Programme, and Scholarship programees as well as WCO CLiKC! E-Learning platform as wonderful privileges and benefits of WCO Membership.

In his opening session, Dr. Kunio Mikuriya, the Secretary-General of the WCO provided video message. In this message, he expressed his warmest congratulation for OCO Secretariat for organizing 25^th OCO Annual Conference in Pohnpei, Micronesia in person. We also welcomed Solomon Island Customs as new WCO Member in January 2023. He also welcomed some non-WCO members already acceded the Revised Kyoto Convention (RKC) and he is really looking forward to becoming a WCO member very soon because there are many membership benefits such as workshop opportunities, Internship programmes and E-learning programmes. He also stated that the WCO's SIEs Guidance document in 2020 is a very useful tool for Pacific members.

This OCO annual conference was attended 15 OCO members with partner administrations and organizations namely ROCB A/P, Japan Customs, UNCTAD, UNDOC, etc. During the conference, OCO members provided updates and recent challenges as well as discussed common interested matters and future cooperation among OCO members and partners.

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