Director General of Vietnam Customs Nguyen Van Can joined the 12th ASEM Customs DG Meeting

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The Director-General Nguyen Van Can at the Meeting

The Meeting was attended by 120 delegates who are Customs Directors General and representatives of Customs administrations of 45 member countries, WCO’s Secretary General and Director General of European Customs Union.

The ASEM Customs Directors-General Meeting is held once two years in Asian and European Customs. Customs cooperation is an economic pillar in ASEM with main priorities of supplementing and enhancing the multilateral trade facilitation in WTO. The Meeting focuses on issues: directing and guiding the working groups; considering and approving reports of the working groups; reporting the results to the Finance Ministers Meeting and ASEM Economic and Trade Ministers Meeting.

Together other multilateral forums, Customs cooperation in ASEM concentrates on developing methods for trade facilitation and security for trade supply chains; standardizing and simplifying Customs procedures; combating against counterfeited goods; fighting against smuggling and protecting society and environment.

The 12th ASEM Customs Directors-General Meeting focuses on evaluating performance results of action plan 2016-2017, whereby countries in charge of operation contents of the action plan will report on the implementation of Customs of the countries and propose appropriate actions to reach the targets set in the Plan.

Fields are prioritized to carry out are: Implementation of Trade Facilitation Agreement, Authorized Economic Operator Program, Product Safety, Coordinated Border Management, enforcement of IPR Protection; Unified Action Plan 2018-2019 and Berlin Announcement which defines prioritized contents to be implemented in the coming time. At this Meeting, Director General of Vietnam Customs proposed letting Vietnam Customs host the 13th ASEM Directors-General Meeting in 2019. The hosting of Customs Directors-General Meeting is not only the member’s obligation but also enhances the position of Vietnam Customs on the international forum.

At present, the position of Vietnam Customs in comparison with other ASEAN countries as well as countries in Asia has been improved with the achievements on modernization reform as well as participation in the development of legal framework for Customs cooperation and integration in the region. Therefore, the hosting of the next meeting will be an opportunity for Vietnam Customs to show its position, especially to European Customs administrations. In ASEAN, only Singapore Customs and Thailand have hosted the ASEM Customs Directors- General Meeting.

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With achieved results in hosting Meetings related to Customs in the framework of APEC and ASEAN, one more time, Vietnam Customs has demonstrated its position in the ASEM forum with a larger scope and greater influence.