The SECO-WCO Global Trade Facilitation Program (GTFP) was officially extended for an additional year.
«(This is) a sign of the growing success of the Program,» reported the Swiss Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the World Customs Organization (WCO).
The decision follows the request for a 12-month free Extension of the GTFP and the subsequent modification of the Contribution Agreement between the SECO and the WCO, which formalizes the extension of the Program implementation deadline until December 2023.
Initially, the Global Trade Facilitation Program started in December 2018 with four initial countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Uzbekistan).
It then expanded to Serbia and Ukraine as the second group of full beneficiary countries.
Guatemala and Bangladesh have also joined the Program as Type 2 beneficiaries with ad-hoc interventions on specific TF issues.
Currently, the Program is in its third year of implementation and has successfully completed more than 45% of the overall planned activities and has made significant progress towards the Program’s objectives and results, with more than 50% in 2 of the 4 expected results and reaching 25% of global products for the Organizational Development and Trade Facilitation components, despite the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Global trade
In this sense, the extension of the Program for an additional 12-month period should allow the GTFP to advance significantly towards the achievement of the initial goals, with the hope of a gradual return to normality and face-to-face missions over the next year and a half. .
This positive decision should also give the SECO-WCO-GTFP Team the opportunity to lay the foundations for sustainable measures whose life cycle will survive the cooperation of the Global Trade Facilitation Program with each of its beneficiary countries, thus fulfilling one of the GTFP’s core objectives: to provide Customs Administrations with a solid foundation for their future work in identified areas and to further develop their organizational, institutional and infrastructure capacities in an autonomous and empowered manner.
