Improve capacity of African Customs officials on trade facilitation agreement – Kuzvinzwa

The Chairman, Sub-Committee of Directors-General of African Customs, Mr Happias Kuzvinzwa, says it is important to develop the capacity of African customs administrations to implement the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) on the continent.

Kuzvinzwa, who is also the Commissioner General, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, said this in an interview with newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday.

He said given the importance of TFA to the development of African trade, it was important to upscale the capacity of custom officials involved in the implementation of the agreement in the region.

He, however, said that enormous resources were required to improve the capacity of the officials in the various customs formations in the region.

“There are so many trade facilitation initiatives that have been initiated by various customs administrations in Africa to facilitate trade but there is need to train all customs officials in all aspects of trade facilitation that a country may adopt.

“ Since the challenges we face differ, we need to train them to understand the process.“

He said that there were recommended and adopted best practices that the customs administrations could use to implement the agreement in the region.

He also told NAN that the meeting of the African heads of customs would also highlight some of the challenges inherent in the implementation of TFA and come up with the best approach on how to surmount the envisaged problems.

According to him, development and enhancement of capacity is mandatory in the area of automation of transit trade and automation of electronic cargo checking.

He said this was critical in promoting ease of doing business in the trade facilitation area.

Kuzvinzwa also said that the challenge of insecurity was also critical to the implementation of TFA, adding that the collaborative effort of all security agencies would help to mitigate insecurity in the region.

This, he said, could be archived through sharing of intelligence information among the security officials in the region.

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