Customs-To-Customs Partnership Strategy In Cross Land Border Clearance Within The East African Community

Abstract

Customs-to-customs partnership is a concept that was introduced by the World Customs Organisation (WCO) in its safe framework of standards. Its key purpose is to facilitate genuine trade. The traditional practice involved a rigorous approach to cargo clearance whereby goods were inspected by national Customs on one side of the border and the same process was replicated on the other side by adjoining Customs administration officials. The approach resulted into significant delays and increased cost of clearance. The WCO therefore viewed that Customs departments on either side of the border must coordinate their efforts to facilitate more effective international trade and enhance compliance to security. Customs-to-customs partnership was adopted and led to the introduction of Customs reforms such as One Stop Border Posts (OSBPs), Coordinated Border management (CBM), Regional Electronic Cargo Tracking System (RECTS), Single Customs Territory (SCT) and Approved Economic Operators (AEOs) among other reforms. Clearance of goods and conveyances of the goods for import and export is the major activity that brings together different governmental bodies and stakeholders in various industries involved in the international cross-border trade. The Chapter 2 of the WCO’s General Annex to the Revised Kyoto Convention defines clearance as the accomplishment of the Customs formalities essential to allow goods to enter home use or to be exported and placed under another Customs procedure. The rapid growth of globalization and international trade require cost-effectiveness and timely cross-border clearance as opposed to the traditional procedure where the same cargo clearance processes were replicated on either side. This study therefore adopted explorative research to explore whether cargo clearance has become faster based on the new model; Customs-to-customs partnership vis-à-vis the traditional two-stop border post model. The main aim of the project was to critically assess the clearance of cargo across the border in order to identify factors, which contribute to performance and technical efficiency. To achieve this the objectives of this research assessed the operations of individual Customs administrations in cargo clearance based on the Customs-to-Customs partnership and traditional two-post model to estimate their impact and compare their performance in reducing the cost and time of clearance, reduction of transit time, enhancing trade facilitation and boosting compliance to regional standards and instruments.