The World Customs Organization (WCO) in collaboration with the Caribbean Customs Law Enforcement Council and St Lucia Customs hosted the first WCO Conference on the Revised Kyoto Convention (RKC) for the Caribbean, at the Bay Gardens Resort, St. Lucia, on 26-30 November 2018. The conference brought together Customs Administrations from Anguilla, Antigua, Bahamas, Belize, BVI, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago.
The objective of this Conference was to enhance the general knowledge of the RKC among Customs administrations in the Caribbean region, to identify accession and implementation gaps and challenges, as well as exploring potential solutions for accession to the RKC.
The World Customs Organization’s Revised Kyoto Convention (RKC) brings together all WCO tools to bear on Customs modernization in support of the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) for the simplification and harmonization of Customs processes.
The two WCO experts, Mr. Samson Bilangna from Cameroon and Mr Pashupati Nath Pandey from India, facilitated the conference which outlined the effective implementation of trade facilitation standards, particularly as defined by the WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA), which builds on the RKC, rights and obligations of Contracting Parties, accession process as well as the provision of the General Annexes. A Gap analysis was conducted prior to the conference to analyze the compliance of the regional and national legislation with the RKC provisions based on the gap analysis template.
To date one hundred and sixteen (116) countries have acceded to the Convention since entering into force on February 3, 2006.
