Last week ICAO and the World Customs Organization held a joint Air Cargo Security and Facilitation Workshop in Bangkok, attended by a mix of national Aviation Security and Customs officials from the region. This was the first such regional Workshop following two global ICAO-WCO Conferences in Singapore (2012) and Bahrain (2014).
The participant list with contacts can be found on the ICAO website, and the interesting in-depth presentations and reference documents have been posted on IATA’s Extranet in the Asia-Pacific section. I attach one of these presentations for your information.
Some key highlights of the Workshop:
· Although the focus has been traditionally on export cargo for AVSEC (pre-loading) and on import cargo for Customs (after arrival), this split is increasingly blurred. Customs is increasingly interested in pre-departure and looking for “the bomb in a box” – particularly with the emergence of Advance Cargo Information and of trusted operator regimes like Authorized Economic Operator for Customs and Regulated Agent / Known Consignor for AVSEC. There appears to be concern from some AVSEC regulators that this new role of Customs might encroach upon their own role.
· Although such meetings go some way in increasing cooperation and understanding between Customs and AVSEC, the Workshop revealed that some opportunity for confusion remains. For example WCO and ICAO have different definitions for “screening”, different approaches to risk management, different definitions of “standards” and of “high-risk cargo”.
· The Workshop was an opportunity for IATA to remind the participants of the benefits of using the standard ICAO-IATA Consignment Security Declaration, especially its electronic version (eCSD) which is now the subject of an IATA Resolution due to come into force in October 2015.
· IATA also promoted alignment by States of their Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) concept at Customs level with their Known Consignor / Regulated Agent regimes at Security level. This is what the EU has done and this makes it easier for companies to apply for both statuses at the same time. This was supported by WCO and ICAO.
· Vietnam has volunteered to be the pilot site for harmonization of security programmes of AEO and RAs, through a cooperation between Civil Aviation and Customs authorities. ICAO and WCO are coordinating and providing assistance.
· Advance Cargo Information (ACI): In addition to EU, US and Canada, Japan was also mentioned as a country about to start testing pre-loading ACI systems.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Kind regards
Nathalie