At the 2017 Council Sessions, Members endorsed six priorities that the WCO Secretariat would focus on: trade facilitation, e-commerce, security, Customs-tax cooperation, illicit financial flows, … and performance measurement. At the June 2018 session, they reviewed the progress related to this work programme and charted the way forward. While doing so, they also discussed possible new areas of work and established a new priority: the revision of the WCO’s revised Kyoto Convention. In this article, I take up each of these topics in turn.

The WCO continued to assist its Members in the implementation of the Revenue Package, which provides guidance and best practices for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of revenue collection, … as well as in the implementation of an advance ruling system for classification and origin, as required under the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Under the Strategic Trade Controls Enforcement (STCE) Programme, a curriculum and modules for training purposes have been developed to assist in the evaluation of standard operating procedures … (SOPs) and work practices dealing with strategic goods. The STCE training curriculum is being adopted by many Customs administrations across the globe, and to ensure its continued adoption, since July 2017 the WCO has organized the following training events.