Background

In December 2011, the General Assembly approved the project “Strengthening the capacities of developing countries and countries with economies in transition to facilitate legitimate border crossing, regional cooperation and integration”. In December 2012, the Review Group that met under the auspices of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs approved the final version of the project document.

Crossing borders has always been a problem in international transport and trade. Despite recent improvements, international transport still faces obstacles, costs and difficulties at borders. Border crossing problems most severely affect landlocked developing countries, as they seriously impede access of those countries to the global market and lead to substantial losses for their national economies. The competitiveness of those countries is undermined by cumbersome customs and other control procedures. Overall, limitations to trade and transport facilitation are detrimental to economic growth, regional cooperation and integration.

Control authorities at borders face security challenges related to smuggling, terrorism, illegal trade and immigration. In view of the large volume of cross-border transport operations nowadays, customs authorities are no longer in a position to control every vehicle or container. Instead, they have to apply risk management techniques and identify high risk consignments on the basis of available data. However, the data provided for risk analysis in a given country could potentially be falsified or intended to mislead customs officials. Often, the most reliable data on the transported goods is available at the customs offices of departure at the origin of a transit movement following an export procedure. To the extent possible, these data should be captured and then made available to the customs authorities of transit and destination countries through a common Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system, prior to the arrival of the goods. The availability of advance electronic cargo information and the establishment of C2C network arrangements have

been identified as cornerstones of the global supply chain security by the World Customs Organization (WCO).

Today, only a few international conventions provide a legal basis for the exchange of information related to the international transport of goods. Among those, the Customs Convention on the International Transport of Goods under Cover of TIR Carnets (TIR Convention) has the broadest geographical scope (67 countries worldwide). The exchange of electronic information is being addressed in the framework of the so-called eTIR project, which has been administered by UNECE since 2002. The eTIR project aims at full computerization of the TIR procedure and will eventually replace customs paper documents by the exchange of electronic messages. The requirements of the necessary electronic systems have already been determined, including the establishment of a centralized C2C information network.

On the basis of the work already done by the eTIR project and its innovations, the proposed project aims at implementing and strengthening the capacity to use a versatile C2C information network in up to five pilot developing countries and countries with economies in transition with their neighboring countries and trading partners. This will ensure a secure exchange of information related to goods in transit, inter alia those under cover of the TIR procedure. The network will be designed to facilitate, in the long term, the exchange of C2C and Business-to-Customs (B2C) information globally. The sustainability of such a network could easily be ensured by means of a minimal fee-for-use that would provide the necessary funds for the maintenance of the system. The secure electronic exchange of C2C information will lead to increased security and reduced border crossing delays.

As a first step, consultants prepared “Gap” analyses assessing the legal and technical requirements of candidate counties to start or extend the exchange of electronic C2C transit information with neighboring countries or trade partners.

As a next step, a secure C2C versatile electronic exchange platform shall be developed and deployed, taking due account of the specific challenges faced by developing countries and countries with economies in transition.

Objective

The selected company will develop, document and deploy a secure C2C versatile electronic exchange platform, that will allow participating pilot countries to exchange transit related information and be flexible enough to allow to easily add additional countries to the data exchange and new flows of messages based on sub-sets of the transit WCO data model.