The General Director of Vietnam Customs, Mr. Nguyen Van Can is attending the 127th/128th session of WCO

	The Customs held a video-conference for the first 6 months: Focus on reforms and business support
	Customs: Practical solution for implementing the task of revenue
	New Director General Nguyen Van Can: Continues efforts to affirm the role and position of Customs

The delegation of Vietnam Customs.

This is the annual meeting at the level of Director General of World Customs Organizations with participation of 180 delegates from member countries, many international organizations, representatives of private sectors and universities also attended this meeting.

The Secretary General of WCO summarized the achievements of the WCO Secretariat in recent years in a report which showed the important role of WCO to be the only international organization of customs agencies – a key management force in managing border zones and facilitating global trade.

In the context of slowing global growth; the hot events are the publicity of Panama Papers, the referendum leading to the decision of UK to separate from EU (Brexit) which will have a large effect on international economic development and trade. Last year, the world witnessed many crises, especially the European region with the exodus and terrorist attacks which once again raised the importance of controlling border security.

The organizations of transnational crime on drugs, weapons, illegal money transfers, tax evasion, manufacture of counterfeit goods are increasingly becoming sophisticated and complex. In this context, WCO again emphasized the importance of strengthening cooperation with other border agencies such as Interpol, local tax agencies to share information, enhancing capacity building and coordination in military campaigns. The Punta Cana Resolution issued by the Policy Committee stressed the importance of establishing in advance passenger information / passenger name record (API / PNR) and recommended that countries apply this system more widely, to strengthen the cooperation between Customs and relevant agencies especially the aviation agencies to more effectively manage passengers across border zones.

At this meeting, the Secretary General of Interpol, Mr Jürgen Stock attended and gave an important speech to the World Customs Cooperation Council. He said that Interpol and WCO all were at the international level and the police and customs force at the national level needed to work closely to share intelligence information, exchange experience and coordinate to use other resources to deal with the terrorists and transnational crime organizations. The projects which have been implemented in collaboration between Interpol and WCO should be actively appreciated and supported by member countries to share best practice.

In the area of ​​trade facilitation, the Conference noted that the Secretary General of WCO reported the updated status of implementing the Trade Facilitation Agreement of WTO (TFA) with the aim of supporting member countries of WCO and WTO in the implementation of TFA such as: Constantly update documents guiding the implementation of TFA, Mecator Program with the workshops raising awareness in the region, and the survey results of the WCO on the establishment of the National Trade Faciliation Committee (NTFC), emphasizing the role of Customs.

Although there have been significant achievements related to the facilitation of trade in recent years, the challenges in implementation of TFA are still handled to promote the optimal application, tools, solution provided by WCO together with the governments’ approval of the agreement to turn provisions for facilitating global trade into reality. WCO chose "Digital Customs" as the theme for the activities of WCO in 2016 along with a variety of tools to assist countries to make use of technological facilities and create more favorable conditions for trade and effective support through coordination of data sharing between the government of member countries and customs agencies.

On the sideline of the 127^th/128^th session of World Customs Cooperation Council, the General Director of General Department of Vietnam Customs, Mr. Nguyen Van Can has had many bilateral activities and meetings with Director General of Customs of America, Switzerland, Japan, Belarus to enhance administrative cooperation and proposed cooperation and exchange of customs intelligence.

The Director General, Mr. Nguyen Van Can met the Director of Compliance and Enforcement Department of WCO, Mrs. Ana Hinojosa.

The Director General, Mr. Nguyen Van Can also met the Director of Compliance and Enforcement Department of WCO, Mrs. Ana Hinojosa. In this meeting, Mr. Nguyen Van Can mentioned the achievements that Vietnam Customs has got in the field of customs modernization and many other efforts in facilitating trade.

In the upcoming time, Vietnam Customs really wants to strengthen customs control much more effectively, particularly in the field of information exchange. Vietnam Customs desires to establish close relations with the countries in Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), particularly with US Customs in areas such as counter-terrorism, anti-smuggling and anti-fraud.

Australia, Vietnam launch customs officer training course to improve detection of banned items Specialists from the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection are running a course that will offer ...

The Director General of Vietnam Customs still continues to attend two official working days of World Customs Cooperation Council until July 16 with many bilateral and multilateral activities.