Nearly 50 managers from the West and Central Africa region participated in a workshop on managing e-commerce flows from 21 to 24 September. Work includes customs clearance, risk management, revenue recovery and cooperation between customs and postal operators.

The World Customs Organisation (WCO) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU) opened a regional workshop on cross-border e-commerce on 21 September in Dakar. The meeting brings together almost 50 officials from customs administrations in the West and Central Africa region of the WCO (WCO-WCO), as well as representatives of postal operators.

It is scheduled to run until 24 September and aims to adapt management and control practices to the increase in volumes of goods and parcels resulting from online transactions.

Work includes risk management, modernization of customs clearance procedures, revenue recovery and control of parcel flows. The objective is also to improve the predictability and transparency of operations while facilitating legitimate trade.

Cooperation between Customs and the Post Office plays an important role in trade, given the increasing number of shipments handled by postal networks in the context of cross-border e-commerce.

The opening ceremony was chaired by Papa Thialaw Fall, Director of Regulation and International Cooperation (DRCI), representing the Director General of Customs of Senegal. In particular, he stressed the need to reconcile trade facilitation with effective customs controls.

The representatives of WCO and UPU, Shinji Oda and Javier Pedro Garcia Blanch Menarquez, also called on participants to take advantage of the training modules and exchange of experiences planned during the four days.

The workshop includes training and sharing of good practices to identify common responses to the challenges of increasing digital exchanges. It receives financial support from the China Customs Cooperation Fund (CCF-China) and logistical support from the Senegalese Customs Administration.