By Choi Kyong-ae
Korea Customs Service (KCS) said on Monday it has signed a preliminary deal with a local organization in Central America to export its customs system to six additional countries there.
“We have exported our UNI-PASS customs system to three Central American countries ― the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Ecuador. The initial pact has paved the way for additional exports to the region in the years to come,” said Yang Dong-seok, deputy director of the KCS Information Planning Division.
In Seoul, KCS signed a memorandum of understanding with the Secretariat for Central American Economic Integration (SIECA) to help the organization’s six member countries establish an integrated system that connects their customs systems, KCS said in a statement.
The six member nations are Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The SIECA is headquartered in Guatemala, according to the statement.
With the help of KCS, the six countries plan to build an integrated system by the end of this year to provide better customers services, Yang said.
“We will initially assist the six countries in building a combined system with our technology and knowhow. As the SIECA makes a strong push to integrate the economy of Central American countries and their customs system, we expect to export our UNI-PASS system to more countries in the region over the next few years,” the KCS official said.
The agreement with the SIECA does not mean the KCS has signed an MOU with each of the six countries, but it will definitely help to win contracts there in the long term, he explained.
KCS began to export the UNI-PASS system by selling it to Kazakhstan for $420,000 in October 2005. As of December 2014, Korea had exported the “unique customs clearance system” for a total of $106 million, according to the statement.
Korea benchmarked customs systems in advanced countries such as the U.S., Japan and Australia to develop the UNI-PASS system which meets global standards. The UNI-PASS system went into use in Korea in 1995, Yang said.