OSCE hosts seminar on facilitating Kazakh cross-border trade, transport

ASTANA, 17 March 2009 - A two-day seminar supported by the OSCE on improving the implementation of international legal instruments to facilitate cross-border trade and transport operations ends in Astana today.

The national capacity-building seminar was jointly organized by the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities, the OSCE Centre in Astana and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Transport Division and the Kazakhstan's Customs Committee. It brought together some 50 representatives of customs departments from Kazakhstan's regions, international experts, including from the UN, and the World Customs Organization (WCO), and private sector representatives.

"Today's seminar may give new impetus on improving customs administration and trade facilitation, and therefore contribute to reaching the strategic objectives we have put forward," said Serzhan Duisebayev, the Vice Chairman of the Kazakhstan Customs Committee. "The national strategy for the development of Kazakh customs is directed at increasing the overall engagement of the country in the international customs community, including through enhanced ratification and implementation of the relevant international legal instruments."

Seminar participants discussed Kazakhstan's recent completion of preparatory work to accede to the WCO's Revised Kyoto Convention, measures to facilitate railway border crossings along the Euro-Asian transport corridors, and benchmarking and performance measurements at border crossings, as well as risk management systems and the potential of advanced public-private partnerships.

Ambassador Alexandre Keltchewsky, the Head of the OSCE Centre in Astana, said: "Improving customs procedures and increasing transparency and efficiency are important not only for the sake of economic efficiency, but also for security, by reducing opportunities for corruption, illicit trafficking and transnational crime and terrorism".

Roel Janssens, an Economic and Environmental Adviser at the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna, added: "Cumbersome customs and border-crossing procedures create an additional burden for landlocked developing countries in Central Asia - and Kazakhstan is one of them - making their 'economic distance' to major markets longer and their reliance on the transit services of non-landlocked neighbours higher."

The Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities, jointly with the UNECE Transport Division, is compiling a Handbook on Best Practices at Borders, expected to be completed by mid-2009. The publication will examine, among other issues, the need to develop a set of standardized performance indicators aimed at measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of border-crossing operations.