The World Customs Organization (WCO) welcomes the 27 November 2014 decision of the World Trade Organization (WTO) General Council to adopt the Protocol of Amendment to the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). This decision inserts the TFA into Annex 1A of the WTO Agreement.
The WTO’s decision is a critical step to implement the TFA, which focuses on Customs-related topics and foresees cooperation between all relevant agencies and stakeholders.
The WCO and the WTO have a long-standing history of cooperation and, as one of the Annex D organizations, the WCO has supported the trade facilitation negotiating process since inception. With decades of experience in implementing global Customs standards, the WCO is an important source of expertise for supporting a harmonized approach in TFA implementation, based on the Revised Kyoto Convention (RKC) and many other WCO instruments and tools.
This has been excerpted from a 28 November 2014 news release by the World Customs Organization and is available in its entirety at:
http://www.wcoomd.org/en/media/newsroom/2014/november/wco-welcomes-the-wtos-decision-on-the-trade-facilitation-agreement.aspx