International Customs Day 2014 |25 January 2014
The Customs Division within the Seychelles Revenue Commission (SRC) is responsible for all related-international trade operations, including the collection of Customs duties (taxes and levied on importation), the promotion and enforcement of compliance, border protection, enforcement of health and security laws and regulations (prohibition and restriction of goods) of trade facilitation.
When did Seychelles Customs join WCO?
Seychelles Customs joined the World Customs Organisation (WCO) on July 25, 2000. Every year WCO commemorates January 26 as the International Customs Day.
What is the theme for this year 2014 Customs Day?
This year’s International Customs Day heralds the launch of the WCO Year of Communication, a year in which the Customs community, are being encouraged to further enhance their communication strategies and outreach programmes.
Under the slogan “Communication: sharing information for better cooperation,” the WCO is signaling the aspiration of the Customs community to do more at the national, regional and international level to raise awareness of the vital role Customs plays in international trade, economic prosperity and social development.
In his message to all Customs administration, the secretary general of the WCO, Kunio Mikuriya, stated that “Communication is a sharing process which fosters cooperation, and as Customs is at the centre of a network of relations, developing a sound internal and external communication strategy promotes transparency, facilitates dialogue, builds trust and ensures mutual understanding”.
What has Seychelles Customs accomplish in line with WCO theme?
The focus on Communication is timely as Seychelles like other Customs administration has also embarked on many Customs reforms in line with WCO Framework of Standard (Safe) which enhances the communication sharing process with Customs to Customs and Customs to Business. In February 2014 the Seychelles Revenue Commission with the partnership of SADC will very soon be setting up a formal platform to facilitate dialogue and advance the Customs – Business Community relationship to create a healthy trading environment.
There have been major reforms taking place within Customs, which demonstrate the continuous effort of SRC to create a healthy trading environment. ‘Communication’ is the core component of all these reforms; to facilitate traders in their transactions with Customs, the Seychelles Revenue Commission switched from using multiple business numbers to one unique identification Number in 2012. At Customs businesses were able to use their registration TIN for their transactions.
The laws governing Customs operation play an important role for Customs in safeguarding the country‘s sovereignty and interests. Customs was using the Customs Management Decree Act 1980 and the Trade Tax Act 1993 and its regulations 1997, in exercising its obligations of duty collection, supervision and control over goods entering and leaving the country. In June 2012 a new law, Customs Management Act was implemented.
In an effort for SRC to benchmark its Customs procedures with international norms Customs
migrated from the 2002 version of the World Customs Organisation (WCO) Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS 2002) to HS 2007. This move facilitates both national and international trade by resolving classification problems that traders were encountering and improve collection of statistics among others.
Furthermore, under a project funded by the tripartite agreement between the Government of Seychelles, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Customs switched from ASYCUDA++ to ASYCUDA World on June 3, 2013. Thus, to keep abreast of new development in Communication, there was a need to switch as ASYCUDA World is a versatile and portable system and is internet based which means it can be connected with other systems and/or other equipment.
The Seychelles Revenue Commission will continue in its commitment to look for ways and means of improving communication with all its partners which will in turn create a healthy trading environment. The CEO (Revenue Commissioner) of SRC is taking this opportunity to wish all Customs staff a Happy Customs Day.
Contributed by the Seychelles Revenue Commission