Korea Customs Service holds workshop for African countries

Korea Customs Service (KCS) Commissioner Yoon Tae-sik, sixth from left in the first row, poses with participants of a workshop being hosted by the KCS in Seoul this week to deepen cooperation in trade and customs policies with African countries. Courtesy of KCS

By Yi Whan-woo

The Korea Customs Service (KCS) is hosting a workshop for senior customs officials from 14 African countries to bolster exports of Korea's electronic customs clearance system and to enhance cooperation in administrative policies.

The workshop began in Seoul on Tuesday and will run through Friday. It invites a total of 30 participants, including two ministerial-level officials from Lesotho and Tanzania and lower-ranking officials from Angola, Burundi, Botswana, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mauritius, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.

"This year's workshop is more meaningful considering it is taking place in person at a time when cooperation between customs authorities of the two sides is becoming increasingly important," KCS Commissioner Yoon Tae-sik said in his welcoming speech.

He highlighted facilitating trade with African countries is critical after the launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in January 2021.

The AfCFTA is an intra-African economic bloc aimed at creating the largest common market in the world since the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995. It involves 54 out of 55 African countries.

It benefits foreign companies operating in Africa by removing barriers such as tariff and helping expand the intra-continental trade of goods, services, investment, intellectual property rights and competition policy, among others.

Operating under the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the KCS has been pushing to export the indigenously-developed electronic customs clearance system, UNI-PASS, worldwide.

Africa as a whole has been the largest customer of UNI-PASS to date, with the region accounting for 64 percent of UNI-PASS sales worth $250 million.

Yoon said the workshop accordingly will be an occasion for the participants to get to know more about the system as well as Korea's knowhow in customs policies.

The commissioner also asked the African countries to support Kang Tae-il, the director of Capacity Building at the World Customs Organization (WCO), in his bid to become the WCO's secretary general.

The successful candidate will be announced in June. If elected, Kang will be the first Korean to serve as the head of the Belgium-headquartered WCO after it was founded in 1953.

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