Articles under "#Performance" category

Issue: WCO News 87

New version of the TRS Guide

 

The WCO has released a new edition of the “Guide to Measure the Time Required for the Release of Goods,” known as the Time Release Study (TRS) Guide. An update of the TRS software and its User Manual will follow in the coming months.

The WCO Time Release Study is an inter...

The WCO Secretariat and Customs administrations worked in close consultation with other international organizations involved in cross-border policies in updating the latest edition of the TRS Guide, based on new and emerging strategic and business needs.

In Version 3 of the Guide, the WCO ...

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

Measuring to learn, innovate and continually improve

Everywhere I have been these last few months, I have seen new technologies being deployed, new practices being implemented, and new projects being launched with the objective of transforming ideas into concrete results to serve the public interest. Customs is truly a world of change.

In or...

The WCO Performance Measurement Mechanism (WCO PMM)

The WCO has developed many self-assessment tools, enabling Customs administrations to determine where they stand with r...

Issue: WCO News 102 – Issue 3 / 2023

WCO launches its Performance Measurement Mechanism

A common approach to performance measurement

The WCO has developed many self-assessment tools over the years, to enable Customs administrations to determine where they stand with respect to the adoption of WCO standards a...

Customs administrations are also able to decide whether to make information on the results of the assessment public, to share it with other Customs administrations, or to keep it confidential. Conducting a PMM assessment is voluntary and is to be divided into two consecutive phases. First the adm...

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

Enhancing performance measurement systems using the WCO PMM: the experience of the Eswatini Revenue Service

In 2023, when developing its 2024-2027 Strategic Plan and mapping out its vision for the future and how it was going to get there, the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) undertook an analysis of its environment, operations and processes. Four core strategic areas were consequently formulated in the P...

A new system

The WCO PMM is structured around four areas:

  • Trade Facilitation and Economic Competitiveness;
  • Revenue Collection;
  • Enforcement, Security and Protection of Society; and
  • O...

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

India’s trade facilitation journey: viewed through the lens of the National Time Release Study

International trade has long played a crucial role in promoting economic development and fostering poverty alleviation among the least developed and developing economies. Countries, economic groupings and the World Trade Organization (WTO), recognizing the beneficial impact of fair and equitable ...

In this article, the authors build upon the previous one, titled Assessing the clearance process: India shares its experience, which was p...

Import Release Time – consistent improvement

With NTRS 2024 currently under preparation, the paper relies on NTRS 2023 to present average export and import release time ...

Issue: WCO News 93 October 2020

WCO applies new approaches to measuring corruption and integrity

The WCO has taken several steps to strengthen performance measurement culture among Customs administrations. These have included looking at how performance measurement can be applied to fighting corruption. This article looks at the new approaches to measuring ...

New responses to measuring integrity

Despite not being an entirely new area of work, measuring corruption and integrity has remained a challenge. As noted in the publication of the World Bank’s “

Issue: WCO News 98 – Issue 2 / 2022

Evaluating the impact of training activities: overview of the WCO Secretariat’s proposal

Most Customs administrations devote a significant portion of their resources to training and competency development activities. The development and delivery of training also feature among the core activities of the WCO.[1] But h...

Figure 1 illustrates a possible WCO operating model for such training activities. It provides for an iterative process and evaluation at all stages, and is results- and impact-based. The initial step that would guide the whole process involves setting and agreeing on the beneficiary’s expectati...

Resource implications

Implementing such a framework requires resources to be allocated to the WCO Secretariat. This will involve the establishment of a Monitoring and Evaluation Unit with dedicated staff, whose responsibi...

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

Namibia’s experience of conducting its first Time Release Study

Article 7.6.1 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) encourages World Trade Organization Members “to measure and publish their average release time of goods periodically and in a consistent manner, using tools such as, inter alia, the Time Release Study (TRS) of the World Customs Or...

Port of Walvis Bay

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

Relieving congestion at land borders: joint TRS sets South Africa and Eswatini on the right track

The Oshoek/Ngwenya border

The border posts connecting the towns of Oshoek in South Africa and Ngwenya in Eswatini are known for long queues of trucks which end up blocking road traffic and negatively impacting both trave...

Both South Africa and Eswatini are partner countries of the WCO Accelerate Trade Facilitation Programme, which is funded by the United Kingdom’s His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC). The WCO capacity building was part of the Programme’s multi-year strategic partnership with both c...

Key findings

On 20 May 2024, the TRS final report which sets out the findings and outlines the way forward towards desired reforms was launched during a public event. All stakeholders agreed on their shared responsibility to improve border processes and on the need to cond...

Issue: WCO News 100 – Issue 1 / 2023

WCO develops a model to assess maturity of leadership programmes

Leadership competencies and skills oil the wheels of organizational progress and success. To support its Members in this field, the WCO has developed a Leadership and Management Development Programme. This article introduces the Maturity Model, one of the tools dev...

An assessment at four levels

The LMD Programme has developed a Maturity Model to support Customs administrations wishing to assess their level of maturity in implementing ...

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

Assessing China’s trade facilitation progress – observations from an independent institution

Beijing Re-code Trade Security and Facilitation Research Centre, an independent not-for-profit research institute, has been evaluating trade facilitation progress made in China since 2016. The findings of this annual evaluation are published in the Trade Facili...

The expert team carried out the evaluation which is both qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative evaluation

The qualitative evaluation is based on the structure of the TFA, which includes 11 articles and 65 pa...

The quantitative assessment results for the year 2023, as published in the Trade Facilitation Annual Report of China 2024 Edition, are shown in Table 1 below.

<...

Changes from 2019 to 2024

The evaluation shows that, out of the 145 requirements of the TFA, 133 have been implemented to an adequate degree or fairly adequate degree in China, while one provision has not been implemented and eleven provi...

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

How the Customs Integrity Perception Survey helped reinforce integrity in El Salvador and Mozambique

The WCO Customs Integrity Perception Survey (CIPS) makes it possible to check how a Customs administration is perceived by its own staff and by individuals who engage with them in the areas of promoting integrity and combating corruption. Thus, the CIPS is an instr...

The metrics used to assess performance under each indicator are similar for both questionnaires. The main metric used is the extent of agreement with a specific statement, along a 4-point scale ranging from “Strongly agree” to “Strongly disagree”. A second metric employed regularly throug...

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

Accountability and transparency features in the United States’ Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) programme

Accountability in operations and programme management has been a principal feature of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) programme since its inception in November 2001. The CTPAT programme is the United States’ Authorized Economic Op...

Internal oversight

CBP has a formal oversight process that delineates the CTPAT programme goals, objectives and deliverables. The Government Performance Results Act Modernization Act (GPRAMA), one of a series of ...

Issue: WCO News 104 – Issue 2 / 2024

Explaining utilization of preferential tariffs: new perspectives

For many years, Maersk, a company that provides shipping, logistics and trade consultancy services, has supported a number of research projects. This article offers a snapshot of a forthcoming academic paper that examines and proposes an explanation for the levels ...

EU-Korea FTA

To test this prediction, we decided to carry out a study by focusing, in particular, on one agreement and on the use of preferential treatment at HS chapter level (first 2 digits of commodity tariff codes). ...

Issue: WCO News 94 February 2021

What the example of Montenegro’s new pre-arrival processing capabilities tell us about Customs performance measurement

* The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent those of their organisations

In June 2019, the Montenegro Customs Administration (MCA) impl...

Below is a step-by-step description of the procedure:

  • Prior to loading:
    • Company receives shipment instructions (booking details) from its customers along with standard information about the goods. The customer also provides additional documents necessary for import clearance...

      The implemented PAP procedure is a significant departure from the pre-existing paper-based control system. At the time of concluding the assessment, 7% of all of the country’s imports were handled using this procedure. Data from DHL show that the rate at which parcels are cleared within 1 hour...

Issue: WCO News 100 – Issue 1 / 2023

Abu Dhabi launches application for real-time measurement of the time required to release goods

Using data analytics, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi has developed an application automating the measurement of release and clearance times at the border. The result is an ability to measure time release dynamically and in real time, and to overcome the limitations of t...

Limitations of traditional TRS

Legacy Time Release Studies are static (one time) and based on manual data collection, observation, and qualitative analysis. This lack of ...

Issue: WCO News 87

Reviewing the OECD method to assess trade facilitation policies

Re-code, an independent Chinese research institute focusing on issues related to Customs and trade, shares its thoughts in this article on the OECD method to assess trade facilitation policies, explains why it decided to evaluate t...

China’s trade facilitation policies

The OECD conducted assessments on China’s trade facilitation policies in 2012, 2015 and 2017.

The results are shown in table 1.

Experts agreed that, in general, the above evaluatio...

Issue: WCO News 94 February 2021

Assessing the cargo release process: Brazil shares its experience

The WCO has long emphasized that the Time Release Study (TRS) is a useful tool with which a country can assess the performance of its Customs administration, border regulatory agencies, port authorities, trade operators and various service providers, in terms of th...

Challenges

The Administration was faced with numerous challenges during the preparation and implementation phases of the TRS:

  • High-level support had to be secured, as conducting a TRS requires resources, as w...

Issue: WCO News 92 June 2020

Facing the COVID-19 crisis with numbers: performance metrics for business continuity

The effort undertaken by the WCO in building a comprehensive Performance Measurement mechanism (PMM) to measure the performance of Customs administrations aims at strengthening a measurement culture among the WCO Membership, and at enabling them to develop metrics ...

International supply chains and new “constellations” rely on solid and flexible manufacturing capacities as well as an efficient international transport system, especially in sectors based on outsourcing and just-in-time inventory. By imposing lockdowns to avoid the spread of the COVID-19 pan...

One of the main risks that Customs face during times of crisis is an IT system shutdown, as highlighted in the WCO Single Window Compendium: “wh...

Issue: WCO News 102 – Issue 3 / 2023

Performance measurement: Canada’s perspective

Crafting a performance measurement system

Measuring performance shows a commitment to transparency, accountability, and effective governance. For a nation embarking on this path, the approach of the CBSA may offer guidanc...

Embarking on programme oversight

Oversight refers to the actions taken to review and monitor policies, plans, programmes, and projects, to ensure that they are achieving expected results, represent good value for money, a...

Using the WCO Performance measurement mechanism

The WCO PMM and CBSA performance measurement model are similar. This is no coincidence, given the collaborative approach adopted by the Customs administrations who particip...

Issue: WCO News 91 February 2020

Peru Customs reduces the time required to release goods

Peru’s air and maritime ports of entry and exit are close to capacity, which creates a series of issues that affect the country’s overall competitiveness, including making imports and exports more expensive in today’s global market.

Among other difficulties, until 2018, any entrepren...

WCO Time Release Study

A few years ago, the National Superintendency of Customs and Tax Administration (SUNAT) started devising a plan to help these companies make better decisions when hiring Customs brokers, in order to...

Issue: WCO News 105 – Issue 3 / 2024

Surveying stakeholders to assess procedures: overview of a field study carried out at Ethiopian borders

This article presents the findings of a field study undertaken in 2021 at the border posts of Ethiopia with Kenya, Djibouti, and Somaliland. During the study, government officials and private sector representatives shared their views and perceptions on border manag...

My interest in border management had emerged during my studies in logistics and supply chain management, which I had started at Addis Ababa University in 2016. The field study was the final assignment of a master’s degree.

I selected these three border posts due to their importance in re...

Inter-agency cooperation

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted inter-agency cooperation at the Ethiopian borders with Somaliland, Djibouti, and Kenya, highlighting ...

Issue: WCO News 86

Assessing the clearance process: India shares its experience

The importance of the Time Release Study (TRS) has long been emphasized by the WCO as a useful tool for Customs administrations across the world to assess their performance in terms of the clearance process. Jawaharlal Nehru Custom House, catering to Jawaharlal Neh...

 The JNCH has been undertaking Time Release Studies (TRS) since 2013, an exercise which is recommended in clause 6 of Article 7 of the TFA. In 2018, a new study was carried out in order to assess the impact of various measures and for drawing-up an evidence based roadmap to achieve the new tar...