Customs officers prepare for Pacer Plus
Trade facilitation is an important role of customs officers; therefore, they play a central role in the successful implementation of PACER Plus. Read More
Ensuring that trade negotiation under the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic (PACER) Relationships Plus is achieved, the Oceania Customs Organisation has been training its officers to avoid shortfalls.
The agreement which came into effect on December 13 aims to better trade in goods, services and investment in the Pacific.
Acting Head of Secretariat Irma Stone, in a statement, said she was confident customs officers are prepared to facilitate trade under PACER Plus in countries that are parties to the agreement.
“Trade facilitation is an important role of customs officers; therefore, they play a central role in the successful implementation of PACER Plus,” she said.
“Under the PACER Plus Readiness Package, OCO in collaboration with the Centre for Customs and Excise Studies at Charles Sturt University (CCES) have been training Customs officers on the Rules of Origin (RoO) of PACER Plus and we recently completed a refresher training in anticipation of the agreement coming into effect.
The organization recently held a workshop for 20 customs officers from nine PACER Plus parties via online mode and a series of webinars on how trade negotiations are made.
The workshop focused on how to determine the originating status of products exported to the Pacific claiming preferential tariff treatment under PACER Plus, the origin verification procedures, and the role and responsibilities of the customs authorities on validating the originating status.
“The training also had an important train the trainer component as some of the participants were regional PACER Plus RoO Trainers and they will be training customs Officials and private stakeholders in their countries.
“During the training, participants were also apprised of advance rulings and they had an opportunity to undertake exercises and also discuss how to implement advance rulings in an efficient manner in their administrations.”
OCO has prepped a total of 104 officers and 168 stakeholders since 2018 to understand “the capacity building provided by OCO is designed to support the PACER Plus Parties to optimize the use of preferences provided for by PACER Plus”.
Meanwhile, countries that are parties to the agreement include Australia, Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
